


This is Us

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform, Rumbelle Big Bang, circus AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 15:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18076022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Sold into a sideshow by his father on account of his strange appearance, Rumpelstiltskin has resigned himself to a life confined to a cage, being gawked at by a morbidly curious public. When Belle French arrives at the travelling show, abandoned by her own father, she gives him the new lease of life and determination that he needs to break them both free of their cages and find a new life where their differences will be celebrated, not jeered.Very, very loosely inspired byThe Greatest Showman, it is absolutely not necessary to have seen that to understand this.Written for the Rumbelle Big Bang 2019View Novaliane-San's accompanying artworkhere





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Content warnings for the whole work:** Genre-typical ableism, implied child abuse (past, off-screen), described facial disfigurement, arson (past, off-screen).

Rumpelstiltskin woke with a jolt as the wagon came to a stop, and he immediately closed his eyes again, trying to recapture the dream that he had been so rudely pulled from.

It had been a good dream. Rumpel liked to think that he had always been blessed with good dreams because his waking life was such a nightmare, but the dreams weren’t exactly all that much of a consolation. In the dream, he’d been working in a shop that repaired furniture and his Aunt Elvira had been there in the back room, sitting at her spinning wheel like she always had done.

It was no use, the dream was showing no signs of returning, so he heaved himself out of bed with a groan and rolled up his blankets into a bundle that would serve as a somewhat comfortable chair for the rest of the day. Creeping over to the corner of the wagon, he slid a hand through the bars and tweaked back the canvas that covered his cage whilst the show was on the road, taking a peek at the place they had arrived in this morning.

The sky was dull and grey, threatening rain at any moment, and Rumpel couldn’t decide if that was a blessing or a curse. Grey skies and rain meant less patrons braving the elements and coming to the show, and that meant less people gawking and him and his fellow oddities. Unfortunately, less people gawking meant less people paying good money, and that meant that Zoso was going to be in a very bad mood; a bad mood that was usually taken out on his unfortunate exhibits. Today was going to be a day of walking on eggshells, it seemed.

Aside from the weather, everything else about the place seemed to be much the same as the last place that they had stopped in, and the place before that. Rumpelstiltskin had long since given up taking much notice of his surroundings. Back when he had been young, and Aunt Elvira had managed, in her wisdom, to preserve some of his innocence by making everything into an adventure for him. He had been excited to wake up every morning in a new place, and to track their travels on the worn-out little map that Elvira had always carried with her. He had no idea if his random pinpointing of places on the map was anywhere near accurate, but it had brought him comfort at the time.

Rumpelstiltskin let the canvas drop back into place and went over to the little wooden chest that contained what few personal possessions he’d been able to salvage and keep over the years. Elvira’s map was still there at the bottom, along with her photograph carefully torn out of one of Zoso’s advertising pamphlets. She’d been the only light in his life for so long, and he kept her picture out of fear that there would come a day when he wouldn’t remember her smile. He could no longer remember a time before the cage, and he’d spent far more years of his life without Elvira than he had with her.  

He washed up quickly with the remains of yesterday’s water and pulled on clean clothes. Elvira had always been very particular about clean clothing; despite their circumstances there was no excuse for looking scruffy. Even after she’d gone, it was something that Rumpelstiltskin had found himself adhering to. At least it reminded him that he was a man, not a thing. Zoso and Killian tried so hard to convince him and his fellow oddities that they were things, subhuman, not really people, but Rumpelstiltskin, even in the depths of the despair that he had sunk into over the years, still held on to that kernel of belief that Elvira had instilled in him when his father had first brought him to the show and handed him over to Zoso in return for a purse of gold coins. _We are not things_.

“Come on, come on, up and at ‘em, wakey wakey, look lively!”

Zoso’s creaking voice cut through the camp like a knife, accompanied by the loud clanging sound of his stick rapping against the cage bars. Rumpelstiltskin raised an eyebrow to himself. He didn’t think that any of the exhibits in Zoso’s Fantastic Freak Show had ever looked lively in all of the time he had been there. There was something about being in a cage that killed any kind of liveliness they might have once possessed before they’d been sold into this soul-destroying servitude.

The canvas over his cage was drawn back fully and Rumpelstiltskin watched Zoso’s helpers setting up for the day’s takings, hanging up the signs next to each of the ‘attractions’ and getting ready to take money at the gate. Killian was coming around with the day’s rations of food and water, grousing as usual about his menial tasks. The only reason he stuck around was because he was hoping to inherit the show from Zoso when the latter finally shuffled off the mortal coil. Considering that Zoso had never looked anything other than old and haggard and terrifying in all the many years that Rumpelstiltskin had known him, he was privately convinced that the old man was never going to die, and Killian would be stuck dispensing rations and emptying slop buckets for the rest of his career.

The thought made him exceedingly happy.

He settled down in the shadows in the far corner of the cage to eat his breakfast. He couldn’t really see anyone from here, but at least that meant that no-one could see him either. He wasn’t really in the mood for company. Directly opposite him, Curi was watching the world with unnerving, unblinking eyes. Poor girl, she was the youngest among them by far, named something he couldn’t pronounce from a place he didn’t know, and she spoke no language he’d ever heard in his time. She’d had the misfortune of being born with twisted ankle bones, so her feet looked like they were on backwards; Zoso had dressed her up in green and advertised her as his little demon.

He smiled at her and she smiled back wanly before retreating away into the darkness.

Rumpelstiltskin looked down at his hands and the green-gold scaled skin that sometimes glittered in firelight. _The Human Crocodile_ , Zoso had said eagerly when Rumpelstiltskin’s father had first dragged him to the freak show, determined to get rid of his son and his strange skin condition for good. Zoso had rubbed his hands together with glee, not afraid of the child as so many others had been in his time, but excited for how much money a new addition to his attractions could make him.

How many times had Rumpelstiltskin dreamed that his skin was a normal human colour and he could escape this place for good? How many times had he dreamed he could escape, only to realise that he had absolutely nowhere to go should he manage to leave? The very existence of Zoso’s show told him that the world was not kind to those who looked different, and he highly doubted that anyone would be willing to help out a poor scaled spinner on the run.

He missed Elvira, his self-styled bearded auntie. They’d shared this cage until she’d died, and whilst Rumpelstiltskin knew he ought to be grateful for the fact his living accommodations were larger than everyone else’s, all he could think about at that moment was how lonely his existence was. Elvira’s spinning wheel still stood in the cage, still lovingly attended, and there was roving to spin today. Spinning helped him to forget what was going on around him and forget that he was in a cage, and it helped him to remember Elvira.

“Hey. Crocodile. Showtime.”

Rumpelstiltskin ignored Killian’s voice, even when the man stuck his hook menacingly through the cage bars, beckoning him closer. Beyond him, Rumpelstiltskin could see that the show was opening up for its morning session; despite the misty rain there were more than enough people willing to brave the weather to come to the circus and get a glimpse of Zoso’s famous freaks.

Rumpelstiltskin grabbed a handful of the fresh roving that Zoso had dumped in his cage the night before, and settled down to work, giving the wheel a good pull to start it turning. Time for another day to begin.

He’d been spinning for most of the day, ignoring the callouses that were forming on his fingers and the ache in his leg from working the treadle, because spinning helped him to block out the jeering and gawking crowd around him. It was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to cast long shadows; Zoso had lit the braziers because even he knew that freaks that died of cold weren’t going to bring in any customers. It was getting to the end of the day and the show would be closing soon; the circus that they were accompanying had just finished its final performance and people were coming out of the tent for a final look at the sideshows before they returned to their homes. Opposite, Curi was singing to herself softly, stopping and smiling every time she heard the tigers roar in the tent.

It took Rumpelstiltskin quite a while to realise that someone was staring at him; he was so used to it by now that he no longer felt the same sensation of being watched. This person had been staring at him for a long time, longer than people usually stayed looking at him when he was spinning. Once they realised that the crocodile didn’t actually have a snout and tail, they lost interest pretty quickly.

He looked around and at first he didn’t see her; she was several inches shorter than most of the patrons. As a rule, Zoso didn’t allow children into the show. It was an advertising tactic more than anything, saying that the freaks were too dangerous and too disturbing for young minds. Rumpelstiltskin had scoffed at that. Zoso and Killian were far more dangerous than any of his fellow prisoners.

She was a little girl, about ten perhaps, licking a candy apple and watching Rumpelstiltskin with ferocious intensity but not a hint of fear. There were no sign of any adults in the vicinity, so she must have snuck in whilst someone’s back was turned.

“Hello,” she said. “What’s your name?”

Rumpelstiltskin blinked. “Pardon?”

“What’s your name?”  the girl repeated. “I’m Emma.”

Rumpelstiltskin left the spinning wheel and came over to the bars, crouching down so that he was on a level with his young visitor.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” he said. “My name is Rumpelstiltskin.”

It sounded so foreign in his ears; only Elvira had called him by his given name. To everyone else he was simply the crocodile.

Emma grinned. “Your skin looks so pretty in the firelight.”

Rumpelstiltskin scoffed. “I don’t think pretty’s the right word to describe me.”

His voice was hoarse and throaty; he hadn’t said so many words together since Curi had first arrived and he’d been trying to comfort her and stop her crying. He hadn’t had what could pass for a conversation in even longer.

“No, I think it’s pretty. I don’t know why they said that you would be too scary for me to see. You’re not scary at all. You’re just a man.”

“Yes, I am. Just a man in a cage with a spinning wheel. Sadly, not everyone shares your opinion. To everyone else, I’m very scary.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t look like them.”

Emma frowned at her candy apple. “That’s silly.”

She fell silent, continuing to contemplate the candy apple for a long time, then she looked up at him again. “Do you like candy?”

Rumpelstiltskin’s mouth began to water just at the thought of it. He loved candy, and he hadn’t had it for so long. Back when Elvira had been alive, she’d had a long-standing deal with the man who’d been Killian’s predecessor as Zoso’s assistant. She would spin him extra yarn for his wife and family, and in return he would bring candy for her and Rumpelstiltskin.

He nodded, and Emma unceremoniously thrust the candy apple through the bars. “I haven’t licked it that much. I have some toffee too, somewhere.”

Rumpelstiltskin took a huge bite out of the apple before anyone could notice what was happening. If Killian saw that he was enjoying a candy treat then he’d get it off him by hook or by crook, literally. It was the best and sweetest thing that he’d tasted for what felt like a lifetime, and immediately he was transported back to better days, if not days that were completely good.

Emma pulled some more paper-wrapped candies out of her pockets, scattering them on the floor of his cage, and Rumpelstiltskin quickly gathered them up and stashed them in the chest for later as he continued to crunch the apple.

“Hey!”

Rumpelstiltskin rolled his eyes as he heard Killian’s shout. He knew that this brief moment of respite had been too good to last. Emma turned to see who had yelled as Rumpel shoved the rest of the candy apple in his mouth, core and all. As much as he would liked to have taken his time to enjoy it, instant gratification was better than no gratification at all.

The girl’s eyes widened as she saw the man with the hook for a hand coming towards her, and she bolted away from the cage, back towards the main circus tent just as a well-dressed couple, obviously her parents, came running out, calling her name with distress.

“Emma! Emma! Where are you? Where have you been? You know you can’t run off like that!”

Killian came over to Rumpel’s cage. “Well done, Crocodile. Still scaring little children off. Looks like you haven’t lost your touch after all.”

Over by the tent, Emma was explaining in rapid fire to her parents about the crocodile who wasn’t a crocodile and the man with a hook who’d scared her off. The couple looked over at Killian and Rumpel, their disdain for once directed towards the man on the outside of the bars rather than the man beyond them, and they hurried their daughter away.

Opposite, Curi started giggling, for all she didn’t speak English she certainly understood the situation, and Killian just snarled at her. She snarled right back, a low growl that mimicked the tigers’, and Killian decided to beat a tactical retreat at that point.

It had been such a short conversation, but Rumpelstiltskin could still taste the caramel and apple on his tongue, and he knew that he had not imagined it. For the briefest of moments, he was able to hold on to the feeble hope that perhaps all was not lost, and that there was a flicker of light somewhere out there.

Then Zoso began putting out the lamps, shutting up the show for the night, and he was once more plunged into an ocean of darkness as the canvases were rolled down again. He let his eyes become accustomed to the lack of light, and he listened to the little songs that the rest of the oddities were singing around the campsite. Elvira had sung the same songs to him when he had been a boy, but they did not hold the same calming power as they always used to.

Rumpelstiltskin unrolled his bedding and lay down, looking up through a little gap in the canvas where it did not quite meet the solid roof of the cage. There were no stars tonight, and he had long since given up wishing on them.

X

He’d only just dropped off to sleep when a commotion outside pulled him suddenly and forcefully back into the waking world. He wondered if it was one of the moneylenders that Zoso had got into trouble with in the past caught up with them again. It wouldn’t be the first time that there had been altercations, but Zoso was wily and Killian was violent and between them they were usually able to deal with any trouble that might arise.

He crept over to the canvas covered bars and tweaked the corner back just as he had done that morning, looking out to see what was going on. In the orange light of the brazier, he could only see one man talking to Zoso and Killian. This was certainly not one of the brawls of previous years; they were talking rather civilly. The shouting and screaming that he had heard was coming not from the men, but from the large trunk that the newcomer had dragged in on a wheeled trolley.

Rumpelstiltskin rubbed his eyes and waggled his fingers in his ears for a moment, but no, he was not dreaming. The trunk was yelling. Once his brain had woken up a little more, he realised that it was not the trunk yelling at all. It was someone inside the trunk, and whoever they were, Rumpelstiltskin knew that he had never heard anyone sound quite so angry.

“Be quiet!” the man hissed, smacking the lid of the trunk.

The trunk lid smacked back, the locks on it rattling, and the female voice within yelled again.

“NO, I WILL NOT BE QUIET, YOU MONSTER!”

“Well, she’s certainly vocal, Mr French,” Zoso was saying. “But I’m still not sure what her appeal would be. Screaming is not a particular talent and dwarfs are ten a penny these days, hardly the kind of garish attraction I take pride in displaying.”

“She’s not a dwarf,” Mr French said, hitting the lid of the trunk again. Rumpelstiltskin’s brow furrowed because the trunk was in no way large enough to hold an average-sized human being. “She’s just over five feet.”

“And she’s in there?” Killian asked incredulously. “What did you do, chop her into bits?”

Zoso smacked his assistance up the back of the head. “She can hardly be screaming blue murder if she’s in pieces, can she?” he hissed, before turning back to Mr French. “This does make things more interesting. Tell me more.”

“She can bend,” Mr French said. “You can fold her into whatever space you want, her joints will bend however you need them.”

“Ah yes, I can just see it now.” Zoso was wearing that hungry expression that Rumpelstiltskin still remembered from the time his father had sold him on. “ _The Girl with Rubber Bones_. I think she’ll prove most lucrative, Mr French.”

“So how much will you give me for her?”

“I’m not sure, Mr French. You see, I’ve seen your type before. You’re far too eager to sell and you need more than she’s worth.”

He named his price, and Mr French’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. He’d obviously been hoping for a lot more.

“I know that’s lower than you were expecting,” Zoso continued, “but if you’ve got to the point where you’re selling your own daughter to raise funds, then I don’t believe you’re in much of a position to argue.”

There was a long tense silence, during which the girl in the trunk also seemed to have quietened down in order to hear what was going on.

Eventually, Mr French nodded. “Very well.”

Zoso grinned his gap-toothed smile. “Excellent. If you’ll follow me to my office, Mr French, we’ll sort out the particulars. Jones, find some accommodation for our new guest.”

“All the cages are occupied,” Killian pointed out.

“You can leave her in the trunk for all I care,” Mr French muttered darkly. “More trouble than she’s worth, that one.”

“Now now, Mr French, she’ll run out of air in there sooner or later and that would be a terrible return on investment for me, wouldn’t it? Put her in with the Crocodile,” he called to Killian as he led Mr French over to his caravan. “There’s room in there, and she’ll be all right with him. He’s long since lost his bite. Although who knows? Maybe fresh meat will bring his appetite back.”

Rumpelstiltskin scrambled away from the canvas and back to his bedding as Killian began to drag the trunk over to his cage. He heard the scraping of locks and tinkling of chains, and then the screaming began again in true earnest and in full volume as the young woman was obviously brought out of the trunk and bundled through the canvas into the cage.

“I hate you!” she screamed, grabbing the bars and bellowing at the canvas as Killian relocked the cage, but Rumpelstiltskin knew that her ire was directed not at her gaoler but at the father who had abandoned her to this circus.

She was yelling incoherently now, just sheer rage bubbling up and out. Even in the low light, Rumpelstiltskin could tell that her face was flushed bright red, but whether that was through anger or having been stuffed in a trunk for however long, he didn’t know.

Finally, once it was clear that this was the point of no return and that Mr French had left the grounds with his cash in pocket, she slumped down onto her knees, still clinging to the bars as she sobbed.

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t know what to do. Did she even realise that she wasn’t alone in here?

At last, he decided to do what Elvira had done for him when he’d been six years old and in the same position, and he grabbed one of his blankets, coming over and draping it around the young woman’s shoulders, kneeling down beside her.

She pulled the blanket in close and glanced over at him.

“Thank you.”

If she felt any fear at his strange appearance then she didn’t show it, but then again, perhaps her eyes weren’t accustomed to the dark as much as his were and she couldn’t see him.

“I’m very sorry that this has happened to you,” he said.

She didn’t respond, just looking down at her hands and rolling her wrists in directions that no-one should have been able to move them. The joints popped, and she gave a little sigh of relief before looking over at him again. She blinked slowly as her vision adjusted, but at no point did she baulk at his scaly skin.

“So how did you come to be here?” she asked.

“Much the same way as you.”

“What, sold by your father for drinking money?” She scoffed.

Rumpelstiltskin just nodded, and she saw that he was in earnest. “I’m sorry.”

She paused to roll her shoulders and elbows; flexible as she might be, being stuck in the trunk had obviously made her stiff.

“I’m Belle,” she said eventually.

“Rumpelstiltskin.”

It was the second time he’d said his name that day. If this carried on then it was going to become a habit. He was certainly going to have to get used to hearing it on a more regular basis if Belle was going to be staying with him for any length of time.

For a moment, he felt a strange and unfamiliar surge of panic at the thought of a woman staying in his vicinity for any length of time, especially one like Belle who was obviously educated and who had obviously been well-off before her father had fallen on hard and alcoholic times. He pushed the feeling aside to focus on the present.

“Your parents named you Rumpelstiltskin? Like the Spindle Imp?” She seemed more disbelieving of this than of his tale of how he came to be in Zoso’s clutches.

“No. My parents didn’t name me anything, as far as I can remember. Aunt Elvira called me Rumpelstiltskin.”

Belle’s eyes focussed on the spinning wheel in the corner and she nodded. “Fair enough. How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know.” Rumpelstiltskin looked over towards the wooden back of the cage and all the scratch marks there. “I gave up counting the days after I ran out of room.”

“Oh my word, you poor thing.”

She stood up and carefully made her way across the floor to run her fingers over the wall. “So many years,” she murmured. “Have you never been out in all that time?”

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. “They make sure I can’t get out,” he said. “I don’t know where they think I would go if I could, though.”

Belle opened her mouth to say something but seemed to decide better of it and closed it again, coming back over to sit beside him by the bars. They stayed in silence for a while until Belle gave a little shiver, pulling the blanket in closer around herself and shuffling a little closer to his side.

“What’s it like here?” she asked. For the first time there seemed to be fear in her voice. “All whilst I was growing up, it was always a threat hanging over me. My father always used to say that if I didn’t behave myself, he’d take me to the side show like the freak I am.”

“You’re not a freak,” Rumpelstiltskin said firmly. “None of us are. We’re people, not things.”

He must have spoken with more vehemence than he realised, for Belle looked at him with an expression of pride and admiration. He flushed, looking away.

“Sorry. Aunt Elvira used to say it.”

“No, no. I think it’s wonderful that it’s something you still adhere to even after all the years you’ve been here.” She slipped a hand out of the folds of the blanket that enveloped her and touched his hand lightly. “Thank you, Rumpelstiltskin.”

Her hand stayed resting on his, and Rumpelstiltskin didn’t pull away. His skin was not sensitive in that regard; his condition was cosmetic only and did not cause him any pain or discomfort, but most people recoiled at the idea of touching the shimmering scales. Those that didn’t, those who were more morbidly fascinated by his skin, would reach through the bars and prod him, and he had learned to pull back almost on instinct, before they could make contact, sometimes without even seeing that they were there. Belle, however, showed no signs of being disgusted by his strange texture, nor fascinated by it. For all she might have looked completely normal to the average person in the street who had not seen her folded into a trunk, she was one of them. She was like him, and she knew what it was like to be someone who didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the world.

“You asked what it was like here,” Rumpelstiltskin began again eventually, remembering her earlier question before he’d got side-tracked. He wasn’t really sure if he should tell her the truth, but she wouldn’t appreciate a candy-coated lie when she would see the reality for herself over the course of the next few hours.

Belle nodded. “Part of me doesn’t want to know. The rest of me wants to be prepared. I mean, it’s night time now, and I think that for people like us there’s always safety in darkness. It’s when the world wakes up and can see who we are that things turn sour. I guess I’m lucky in that respect. I’ve always been able to hide.”

It was those few words that gave Rumpelstiltskin the first kernel of an idea in his head. He pushed it away to one side; it was something that would require a lot of concentration and brainpower to make work and he wasn’t in a position to be even considering it yet. All he could do right now was to make sure that Belle was as comfortable as she could be in her new surroundings and prepare her for the life that she had been so unceremoniously thrust into.

“As long as you stay quiet and keep your head down, you’ll be fine,” Rumpelstiltskin said, although given the noise that Belle had been making when she’d first been brought to the show, he thought that advice might have already fallen by the wayside. Killian and Zoso would have already pegged her as a troublemaker, and Rumpelstiltskin had already made a mental note to make sure that he was always between Killian and Belle as much as possible. “Zoso uses fear as a tactic more than anything. He’s scary, and he plays off that, but ultimately he’s old and frail and he uses that stick for support more than he likes to admit. Not that I think he’ll ever actually die, because he’s been like that for as long as I can remember. It’s Killian that you’ve got to watch out for. Killian follows through on Zoso’s threats.”

There was also the fact that Killian always had a gun shoved in the back of his trousers and had a literal hook for a hand, which already made him twice as dangerous as Zoso even without his hair-trigger temper.

“Yes.” Belle shuddered. “Yes, I got that impression. What happened to his hand?”

Rumpelstiltskin smiled at the memory. For all he would never wish ill on his fellow man, Killian was one person whom he’d never really considered a fellow man, mostly because Killian didn’t consider Rumpelstiltskin to be a man at all, so it was hard to extend him the same courtesy. It was a bittersweet memory really, because they could have been rid of him once and for all but all he lost was a hand.

“That was an accident,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “Although, there are a few of us who think that it might not have been. I’ll tell you tomorrow, once you’ve seen Curi.”

“Curi?”

Rumpelstiltskin drew back the canvas a little and pointed out Curi’s cage opposite. “I can’t pronounce her real name. Curupira, Curipria, Caipirinha, something like that. For now, we’ll suffice it to say that Killian is scared of tigers.”

A little smile quirked the corner of Belle’s mouth. It was the first time that she had shown any sign of a smile since she had arrived, and Rumpelstiltskin smiled back, trying to encourage her, although it probably came out as more of a grimace. Keeping a positive mental attitude was important, Aunt Elvira had always said. _We might be in a bad place, but there’s no point in not trying to make the best of it or there’ll be no point to living life anymore and we might as well all give up here and now._

It was strange how these lessons of Aunt Elvira’s kept coming back to him now, even when he had forgotten them for so long in her absence. Now that he was falling into her role, with Belle as his fearful new charge, everything was coming full circle and giving him a fresh sense of purpose.

“You should get some sleep,” he said, indicating his bedroll. “Zoso will bring you more blankets in the morning, but for now you can take my bed.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine on the floor.”

Belle raised an eyebrow, evidently not believing a word of what he’d just said, but then she just shrugged.

“All right then. Thank you.”

She gave her blanket back to Rumpelstiltskin and made her way over to his bedroll, curling up on herself inside it, facing away from him. Now he could see just how she’d managed to fit inside that trunk. She was so small, but although she could have looked so fragile and birdlike, there was a strength in her, a tenacity and resilience that mirrored the incredible resilience of her joints. She was definitely scared; Rumpelstiltskin would have been concerned for her sanity if she had not been scared. All the same, he thought that she would be a survivor. They were all survivors here. The ones who weren’t didn’t last all that long.

He wrapped the blanket around himself, still warm from Belle, and got comfortable against the wooden back wall, closing his eyes to sleep. The presence of another body in his cage was unusual, and although he had always been able to sleep soundly whilst Elvira had been living with him, he’d been on his own for so long now that it was strange to be able to hear another person’s breathing.

Gradually though, Belle’s evened out into a light dozing pattern, and slumber found him not long after.

It was still dark when Rumpelstiltskin woke, the braziers still crackling with life outside, and he was disorientated for a moment, unsure of his surroundings and stiff from his unusual sleeping position. He couldn’t have been out for all that long, the shadows on the canvas hadn’t moved. He wondered what had roused him, and almost immediately found his answer. Beside him on the bedroll, the bundle of blankets that was Belle was shaking with silent sobs. For the second time that night, Rumpelstiltskin had no idea what to do. All he could do was try to think of what would make him feel better had he been in Belle’s position once more, and hope that it would stick if he did the same thing for her.

Carefully, he got to his feet, not wanting to disturb Belle, but immediately she stiffened, her crying stopping. She turned over, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks as he crossed the floor; and he stopped, frozen and feeling absurdly guilty at having been caught, although for no reason at all.

“I’m sorry,” Belle whispered, her voice thick and choked from tears. “Sorry I woke you.”

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. “It’s no matter. I have something that I think will help.”

He went over to his chest, taking out a clean handkerchief and one of the toffees that Emma had given to him earlier in the day, and he presented them both to Belle. Far from having the desired effect, however, she simply immediately burst into a fresh flood of tears.

“Belle? Belle, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make things worse…”

Belle shook her head. “No, no, you haven’t. You’re being so lovely, and I’m just so miserable…”

She dried her eyes on the handkerchief, staring down at the toffee in her hand.

“Go on,” Rumpelstiltskin urged. “Sweets always make me feel better when things get bad.”

“Well, I don’t think that they can get much worse. Thank you so much.” Belle unwrapped the toffee and popped it in her mouth, and she finally gave a weak little smile as she sucked thoughtfully.

“Thank you,” she said again, after a while of silence. “You know, Rumpelstiltskin, I’m beginning to think that you’re some kind of miracle.”

“Me? A miracle? How?”

“Because you’re so kind. I just can’t understand how you can have gone through so much and been here in this hellhole for so long and yet still be so kind.”

Rumpelstiltskin felt heat rise in his face, and he was glad that his skin didn’t show flushing.

“We’re people, not things,” he reiterated. “Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself. Even if the world is cruel to us, we can still be compassionate towards each other. We have to be. It’s us and them, and if we are cruel to each other, then they’ll always win. That’s what Aunt Elvira used to say, and it’s how I try to live, even if only within these confines.”

Belle was silent for a long time, just watching him.

“Your Aunt Elvira sounds like an amazing woman to have raised someone in these circumstances to be as compassionate as you are,” she said quietly. “I would like to have met her.”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “She was amazing.”

Although it had not done so before, the thought of Elvira suddenly brought an uncomfortable lump to his throat. Perhaps it was because he had been thinking about her so much today, and he had been reminded so much of the love that she had shown him during his first terrified few days in the cage. Wherever she was now, at least she was free, and that thought would have to be enough to comfort him in her absence.

Thankfully, Belle sensed that the conversation was closed, and she made no further comment, just continuing to suck her toffee in silence.

“Are you not cold like that?” she asked presently as he settled himself back into the position that he had been sleeping in before.

“I’ll be fine.” That said, he was still stiff just from the hour or so that he’d been asleep before, and it was only going to get worse come the morning proper. Belle was obviously thinking along the same lines.

“It looks like we’re going to be living in close quarters for quite a while, Rumpelstiltskin,” she said. “I think we might as well get used to it. Come and lie down. Stay warm and comfortable.  After everything that you’ve already done for me, I think that the least I can do is let you sleep in your own bed.”

Rumpelstiltskin conceded, the need to stretch out his back finally outweighing everything else, and Belle shuffled over on the thin bedroll to allow him to lie beside her. They were so close that they were almost touching, but not quite, just enough for Rumpelstiltskin to be very conscious of Belle’s presence. This was absolutely definitely not the same as when he’d been a boy and he’d crawled into Aunt Elvira’s bed when the nightmares had come after his father had abandoned him.

Luckily, he was too tired to overthink it any more than that, and dreamless sleep returned quickly.

X

When Rumpelstiltskin next woke, it was definitely morning. He could hear the show being set up for the day’s takings again, and he could immediately tell that Belle was no longer lying next to him where she’d been when he’d fallen asleep. He squinted against the bright light pouring in from the areas where the canvas didn’t meet the cage, and he found her in the corner where they’d sat the previous evening. She’d hitched the canvas up and was reading by the daylight, although where she’d got a book from was anyone’s guess.

She gave him a little smile as she realised he was watching her, and she held up the book.

“It was tucked in my petticoat,” she said. “It was the only thing I managed to grab before my father shoved me in the trunk, but there was no way I was leaving without it. It’s my favourite book. My mother used to read it to me when I was little. I suppose I wanted to bring a little piece of her with me.”

Rumpelstiltskin thought of Elvira’s spinning wheel, and her picture in the bottom of his chest. That was a sentiment that he could well understand.

“Have you ever read it?” Belle continued. Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. He couldn’t exactly admit that he’d been brought to the sideshow before he was old enough to be learning his letters and Aunt Elvira hadn’t been literate either, so he’d never been able to read.

“Oh, it’s amazing. Daring swordfights, a prince in disguise… It’s got everything.” She gave a little sigh. “Books are such a wonderful way to escape from the world. For those few moments that you’re reading, you’re able to forget who you are and what’s happening to you. It’s perfect.”

She certainly made it sound perfect, and for a moment, Rumpelstiltskin felt a pang of jealousy that he would never have the chance for such an idyllic escape.

“Someone’s coming.”

Rumpelstiltskin gave a squawk of alarm and quickly turned away as Belle pulled her skirt up and shoved the book back into the waistband of her petticoat, making herself decent just as the canvas was drawn up fully to signal the beginning of another day. The usual chaos of feeding, watering, and cleaning up started, and Zoso came by to check that his newest acquisition had survived her first night, warning her in no uncertain terms that if she did not perform for the paying public, then he would fit glass panels in her trunk and lock her back in there for twelve hours a day for people to marvel at.

Belle just glowered at him, her face the very picture of incandescent fury, but she heeded Rumpelstiltskin’s words of the previous night and did not put up a fight. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t a fight that she could win.

At least, Rumpelstiltskin thought, the little idea that he’d had earlier coming back to him, it was not a fight that she could win _yet_.

“Pig,” she muttered under her breath after Zoso had left. “I can’t tell who’s worse, him or Killian.” She looked over at Rumpelstiltskin. “You were going to tell me about Killian’s accident that might not have been an accident,” she reminded him. “I’ve met Curi now. We bonded over backwards feet.”

Rumpelstiltskin raised an eyebrow, and Belle twisted her ankle joints until they popped. Her feet weren’t at quite the same dramatic angle as Curi’s, but it was still impressive. Across the way, Curi was smiling at the sight.

The show had only just opened and there weren’t that many visitors arriving yet, so Rumpelstiltskin sat down beside Belle. There was time to tell the tale.

“So, tigers,” Belle began.

Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “The circus we travel alongside has tigers.”

“I know. I’ve already heard them.”

“One day, the tigers escaped. Ironically, we were all safe because we were in our cages. I think all of us were secretly wishing that the poor beasts would go for Zoso and Killian. Zoso was sensible and got out of the way, deciding to leave it to the circus tamers to deal with the problem. Killian wasn’t quite as fast and was a damn sight stupider.”

“A tiger took his hand off?”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded.

“Good for the tiger,” Belle muttered. “But how was that possibly not an accident?”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded towards Curi.

“I think she told them to do it.”

“What? She… You can’t be serious.”

“Whatever else you might say about the tigers, they were pussycats when they got near her. I swear she’s got some kind of power over them. She was talking to them, stroking them through the bars. A minute later, one of them was chewing on Killian.”

Belle’s eyes widened, and she looked over at Curi’s cage with awe. “Good for her.”

With Killian’s gruesome story told and a newfound admiration for Curi imparted, Belle settled down on the pile of bedding that Zoso had finally seen fit to give her, and she looked out of the bars, staring at the visitors just as they stared at her.

“I think we’ve truly reached the nadir of society,” she said, glancing over at Rumpelstiltskin at his wheel.

He shrugged. “You get used to it after a while. Most of the time I don’t even realise that they’re staring at me anymore. It gets easier to bear if you just ignore them and pretend they aren’t there. They lose interest after a while, and it annoys Zoso and Killian no end when their exhibits don’t draw in the crowds they want.”

“Don’t they retaliate, though?” Belle was looking over towards Killian and Zoso at the entrance to the show, and at Killian’s vicious-looking hook. Even though she now knew the story of how he had come by it, that didn’t change the fact that it could do a lot of damage if he was in the right mindset, and Rumpelstiltskin knew from experience that it didn’t take a lot to put him in the right mindset. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind.

“Sometimes. They tend not to bother with me anymore. I’ve been here so long that I’ve become part of the furniture, and I’m used to the fact that people are going to stare at me no matter what I’m doing, whether I’m acting the part of a crocodile or a man. So, I prefer to remember that I’m a man, however much I might look like a beast.”

Belle got up off her bedding and came over to him, and he felt her warm hand on his shoulder.

“You’re not a beast,” she said. “You’re the kindest and most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve only known me for a day,” Rumpelstiltskin pointed out, feeling the heat in his face rising again.

“I think that’s enough to make a good impression.” She looked on in fascination at his spinning, and Rumpelstiltskin shifted over on the bench to make room for her to sit down. “You spin a lot.”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “That’s the other reason why Zoso keeps me around despite me being not at all interesting to the public most of the time. I bring in the extra revenue from the spinning, so I earn my keep in a different way.”

He could tell that Belle wanted to say something. There was something in her face that betrayed her indignation and righteous anger at the state of the world. Had they not been in a cage with members of the public gawping at them, then Rumpelstiltskin had no doubts that she would have just let rip with a tirade on the unfairness of it all. He gave her a sharp look, shaking his head, and she let out a long and shaky breath through her nose, closing her eyes.

“It’s just so unfair,” she muttered. “You don’t deserve this. None of us do.”

“I know that,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “But there’s not a lot else that we can do about it. These are the cards that I’ve been dealt, and I just have to accept them.”

“But why?” Belle asked. There was a pleading tone in her voice and she grabbed Rumpelstiltskin’s arm, the motion of the wheel coming to an abrupt halt. He shook her off, unused to sudden contact. “Why do you have to accept them?”

“Look at me, Belle,” he hissed. “What kind of society would accept me?”

In the back of his mind, he remembered the tales that Aunt Elvira had used to tell him, of a far-off, magical place where people like them could live in peace, their differences celebrated rather than jeered and used for cheap entertainment. When he’d been a boy and he’d first come to the sideshow, he’d believed her, and he’d waited in vain for the day when he could somehow be spirited away to this fairy tale land, and everything would be good.

As time had gone on, however, he’d realised that it was simply a story she’d told him so as not to let him lose hope. With Elvira gone, Rumpelstiltskin’s hope of ever having a normal life had waned dramatically.

He’d never had the luxury of the same rage against the world that Belle had. He’d never been a part of the world in order to rage at it in that way. He’d been an outsider looking in for as long as he could remember, and there was nothing that he could do about that. He completely understood Belle’s anger. He was angry himself, all the time, but there was nothing that he could do about it, so he kept it bottled up, kept it away from the rest of his life. The world was unfair, but he had never known it to be fair. He’d never had that same taste of acceptance that Belle had had before she’d come to the sideshow, and he would never know rejection in the same way that she did. She had been part of society. It had welcomed her, until her father’s intervention. Rumpel had never had that welcome, and he knew that he never would. It wasn’t something that he liked, but it was something that he’d made his peace with. He didn’t have any other choice.

Belle, though… Belle had a choice. Belle had potential. And Belle certainly didn’t belong here in the sideshow when there was an entire world out there that she could live in unnoticed and undisturbed. Almost from the moment that he had first become aware of her, kicking and screaming inside the trunk, Rumpelstiltskin had known that unlike him, she was destined for far better things than life in a cage. The world that she raged against now was hers for the taking, and he would do whatever he could to help her take it.

Whilst he had been lost in thought, he hadn’t noticed Belle looking at him intently, and he remembered that he’d asked her a question to which she was obviously trying to find the answer. What kind of society would accept him? The fact that it was taking her so long to say something told him all he needed to know. As much as she might want to change things about their current situation, she knew that there was nothing that could be done for him. His fate was a done deal and had been from the moment he was born.

“Look, Belle, some of us weren’t meant to be happy, and that’s something I’ve long since learned to live with.”

Belle shook her head. “You have to have hope,” she whispered. “There’s something better out there for you, I know it. This can’t be the only way for you to live your life.”

“The world is not kind to people like me, Belle.” He sighed. “You can see that just from looking outside those bars.”

“Rumpel, these people who come and gawk at you every day don’t represent the entirety of the world. There has to be somewhere better out there.”

“There isn’t,” Rumpelstiltskin snapped. “Not for me.”

“So, you’re just going to sit here and accept your fate? This is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life, just sit here and spin whilst the world watches?”

“What else is there for me to do, Belle? This is a world that I will never be able to be a part of, and nothing you or Elvira can say will change that.”

Belle got up from the spinning wheel bench with a huff and went back to her corner, drawing her knees up close to her chest and resting her head on them, her face turned away from him. She was still so young and still so full of life; she’d only been here for less than twenty-four hours and she’d not had time to become disillusioned. If Rumpelstiltskin had his way, then she would not be here long enough for that to happen. He might have accepted his own fate, but he could not accept hers. Her frustration was refreshing, even if it was directed at him at the moment. He didn’t want her to lose it.

Belle stayed in her corner for most of the rest of the day, and Rumpelstiltskin was beginning to think that she’d fallen asleep. Zoso kept looking over at her, his mouth set in a thin line of anger that his newest attraction wasn’t performing. If Belle was a bad investment, then Rumpelstiltskin dreaded to think what might happen to her. He’d seen many other oddities come and go during his time at the show, and he knew that Zoso didn’t simply let them go when they were no longer as lucrative as he’d hoped they’d be. For now, he seemed to accept that this was Belle’s first day, and she was still missing her home and getting used to life in the show.

The visitors, however, seemed to have other ideas. Rumpelstiltskin had first noticed the group of young men as soon as they had entered the show. He knew their type; most of the rest of the oddities did. They were the type that liked to rattle cages and try to provoke reactions from those within. He glanced over at the cage opposite. Curi had retreated into the darkest shadows and he knew that nothing would coax her out again until the group had gone. They were clearly inebriated, drunk off bottles of beer procured at the circus, and Rumpelstiltskin had been watching their progress around the paddock as much as he could from his vantage point by the spinning wheel.

When they arrived at his and Belle’s cage, he stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck pricking up. Whilst he didn’t always notice people staring at him in fearful fascination or morbid curiosity, he could always tell when people were leering with the intention of causing some kind of trouble.

He let the wheel fall still and silent and didn’t move, watching the young men out of the corner of his eye. Belle was watching them too, and it quickly turned into a stand-off, each group daring the other to make the first move. Rumpelstiltskin knew that it would not be him and Belle who would end the strange siege.

“Hey, rubber girl,” one of them called. “Let’s see you bend over.”

Belle didn’t deign to respond, just fixing the cat-caller with a glare.

“You know, they make girls out of rubber,” another one said. “I wonder how she matches up.”

The comments got lewder and lewder, and Rumpelstiltskin could feel the blood boiling in his veins. Of all the things that he’d seen and heard and put up with over the course of his stay with the show, he’d never heard anything quite this insulting, because none of the other ladies who’d ever been part of the show had ever been conventionally beautiful like Belle had been. There had always been something about them that the general public, bound by society’s standards, considered unattractive.

He stood up from the wheel, sending the bench flying but knowing better than to do anything that might damage Elvira’s precious wheel and the only thing that brought him any kind of peace.

If they wanted a crocodile, then they would get a crocodile. If they thought he was a beast, then they’d damn well get a beast.

Within a second he was at the bars, a snarl pulling back the corners of his mouth and one arm reaching out through the bars to scratch at the worst offender’s face. His fingernails had always been hard and claw-like, and whilst Elvira had always kept them filed down in case he hurt himself, now that he was an adult, he’d always liked the idea of having some kind of self-defence about his person at all times.

The suddenness of the attack was enough to shock the group into moving away, pulling their bleeding companion with them. Perhaps if they hadn’t been drunk, they would have stayed and goaded him into a further fight.

Behind them, Killian was looking on, and he clapped his hand and hook together in mock applause.

“So, it seems like the crocodile does have some bite left in him after all,” he said, coming over. “We did wonder if some fresh meat in your cage would stir your blood a little. Good to see you defending your turf. Maybe we can get a performance like that out of you every day.”

He looked over at Belle and gave her a wink. Belle just glowered at him and made a rude hand gesture. She was certainly not going to be a part of whatever it was that Killian was planning.

It was almost time for the show to close, and Rumpelstiltskin came back over to the spinning wheel, righting the bench and sitting down on it, running his hands through his hair and staring down at his feet. Now that the adrenaline had worn off and the vicious anger that he had felt was winding down, he was ashamed of his outburst. At the time, it had been the only thing he could think of to stop the young men, because he couldn’t just sit there and ignore them. If it had been him that they were taunting, then he could have taken it; he had never risen to them before. But because it had been Belle, he’d felt compelled to act. It wasn’t just his own life anymore. He was thinking of Belle as well.

He felt her small hand on his shoulder once more.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“I made a complete spectacle of myself,” he muttered.

“You did what you had to. The only thing you could do. And you did it for me. I know how much your humanity means to you, Rumpel, and I know how much you cling to it, and cling to the truth that you’re a man, not a beast. I know how much it must have hurt you to sacrifice a part of that today, but you did it, and you did it for me. So, thank you, Rumpelstiltskin.”

Her lips pressed against his cheek, and Rumpelstiltskin could feel their warmth long after she moved away.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The circus packed up early next morning, and that meant that they would have a couple of days on the road whilst they drove in convoy to their next destination. Zoso would always complain about the length of time that the journeys took, but neither the circus nor the sideshow that accompanied it had enough funds for a train just yet, so wagons were their only way of getting from one town to another.

Despite the rough and bumpy journey ahead of them, Rumpelstiltskin was glad of the few days of respite that they’d now have before the crowds descended upon them once more. These few days between stops were days that all of the oddities looked forward to, and whenever they stopped to rest the horses, there was a sense of contentment in the air as the songs once more crept quietly through the camp. The oddities would pin up their canvas as best they could and take a solace from each other that they could not do when they were set up for a show.

Every so often, Zoso would come grumbling out of his caravan and tell them to quieten down, but that never stopped them for long.

Belle was sitting by the bars, reading in the light of the braziers, but she had not turned a page in several minutes, and Rumpelstiltskin could tell that she was much more engrossed in the sounds of the camp than in her book. Leaving the wheel for the night, he came over and sat beside her, looking out of the bars. It was only once he was closer that he realised that she was crying.

“Belle? Are you all right?”

She nodded, wiping her eyes and giving him a small smile.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m all right. It’s just listening to the songs, you know. They all sound so lovely. They give me hope that no matter what happens, I’ll still be me at the end of it all. Everyone still has their own songs, and they’re all soothing, happy songs. They’re songs full of hope and light.”

“When so much of our world is dark, we need hope and light in our songs,” Rumpelstiltskin said. Belle looked at him.

“Is that why I never hear you sing?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“I can tell that you’ve given up hope for yourself,” Belle said. “Is that why I never hear you sing?”

Outside, the latest tune had come to its coda, and Belle was still looking at him with that little smile.

“I think it’s your turn, Rumpel. Why don’t you give us a song?”

He shook his head. “The only songs I know are the lullabies that Elvira used to sing to me.”

“I’m sure that they’re still just as beautiful now.”

Belle was right. The songs were just as beautiful now as they had been when he was a boy, and they were still a symbol of the hope that he was all out of. It was true that he had given up hope for himself, but he had not yet given up hope for Belle. Maybe he could gift her a song along with his hope, to show her that somehow, he was going to get her out of here. He wasn’t sure how yet, but he knew that he was going to do it.

Whilst he’d got used to using his speaking voice again with Belle in such close proximity all the time, his singing voice was still rather rusty, and he sounded rather squeaky and reedy as he began.

_“Sleep well, my bairnie, sleep. The laing, laing shadows creep…”_

He could still remember all the words as clearly as if he had last sung them yesterday, and they brought back powerful memories of Aunt Elvira, and the hope that she’d never forsaken, even in her last hours, and even after everything that had happened to her in her too-short and too-hard life. Maybe there was some hope for him after all. Elvira had certainly believed that there was. After she’d died, Rumpelstiltskin had become rather cynical about the whole thing. He’d known, of course, that she’d only been trying to make him feel better, feeding a child’s imagination and giving him that much needed hope. After she’d died, there didn’t seem to be much point in having any hope anymore.

Now that Belle was in his life, perhaps there was hope for him after all.

He came to the end of the lullaby, and he shook that thought away from his head. Hope was a very dangerous thing for someone like him to entertain. All too often it was ripped away from him by the life he had no control over. It was better just not to have any to start with, however intoxicating the notion of it might have been.

“That was beautiful,” Belle said softly. Looking around at the other cages gathered in a circle around the braziers, Rumpelstiltskin could see all the faces of his fellows looking at him from the gaps in their canvas.

“It’s been a while since we heard one of Elvira’s songs, Rumpelstiltskin,” Old White Rab said, his blind red eyes burning bright in the firelight. “You should bring her memory back to us more often.”

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t reply, but Belle was smiling at him, and he knew in his heart that he had done the right thing – just as long as he didn’t become too attached to the hope that it ignited in his heart.

Presently, Belle closed her book, setting it down beside her. Rumpelstiltskin had given her space in his chest for her personal items, so she was no longer having to shove it in her underwear, for which he was rather grateful.

“Would you like to borrow it?” she asked. “I’m sure that you’d enjoy it. Tales of escapism and far off places. When I was a little girl I used to dream of travelling the world like the characters in this book did. I had so many adventures in my head. You don’t seem to have had all that many adventures, and I’d hate for you to be missing out.”

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s for me.”

“Oh, come on, Rumpel. You’ll never know until you try it. It would give you something to do that wasn’t spinning all the time.”

“I like to watch the wheel turn. It helps me to forget.”

She didn’t ask him what he was trying to forget. She’d only known him a few days, but she knew him well enough to know that the answer was simply ‘everything’.

“Well, this will help you to forget as well, in a different way.”

He could feel himself beginning to panic now. He knew that Belle only meant well and was just trying to share her interests with him, but at the same time, her persistence was becoming alarming.

“No!” he exclaimed. Belle took a step back, taken aback by his vehemence.

“Rumpel?” she hedged. “What’s wrong?”

He sank down onto his bedroll with a sigh. It was going to have to come out, he couldn’t really put it off any longer.

“I can’t read,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I can’t read,” he repeated, through clenched teeth. “I never learned before I came here, and Elvira couldn’t read either, so she couldn’t teach me. There, are you happy now?”

His humiliation complete in her eyes, he rested his head in his hands and waited for her judgement.

“Oh Rumpel, that’s awful.”

“I know, there’s no need to rub it in.”

“No, not that. To think that you’ve never known the wonders of being lost in a story.”

He looked up as Belle plopped herself down onto the bedroll beside him, holding open the book.

“Here,” she said. “I can teach you.”

“I think it’s a bit late for that, Belle. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“It’s never too late to learn to read and write,” Belle said firmly. “Here. I’ll read aloud, and we can start from there. I think it’s too late to begin any lessons tonight, but I really want to share this story with you.”

“What’s it called?”

 _“Her Handsome Hero.”_ Belle traced her fingers over the words on the cover. “It’s a daring tale of knights and rescues. The hero is called Gideon. For a long time when I was little I used to dream about him.”

“A dashing knight coming along to save you from peril?” Rumpelstiltskin teased.

“No, no, about being him and getting to go riding off into the sunset having adventures and rescuing damsels myself. I always wanted to come face to face with a dragon.”

“I can give you a crocodile instead.”

Belle just playfully batted his arm. “You’re not a crocodile. Now, here we are. _Once upon a time, in a land very far away from here, there lived a young man named Gideon. He was a perfectly ordinary young man, but as our story shows, the most extraordinary things can sometimes happen to the most ordinary people. For Gideon, although he did not know it yet, was a great hero…”_

Belle’s voice was soft and lilting, rising and falling in all the right places as she told her tale. She read through the first chapter, and Rumpelstiltskin could already feel himself getting lost not so much in the story, as in her voice and the conviction with which she spoke, as if this fictional tale had really happened and she had been there to witness it from the beginning. Given the number of times that she had read this book and the number of times that she had visualised it, she could probably tell Gideon’s story from memory anyway.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” she said. Rumpelstiltskin wanted to protest that he wasn’t at all tired and that he really wanted to find out what was going to happen to Gideon next, but then he realised just how much like a child that would sound. He fell to thinking as they went to their separate beds, Belle putting the book safely away in the chest. It was true what she had said. There was definitely something in being able to take one imagination away from the hardships of every day life and find solace in other worlds.

“I never had all that many friends when I was a child,” Belle said in the darkness. “Even then, I knew that I was odd. So, books became my friends instead.”

She turned over, and Rumpelstiltskin could just about make out her face in the cage. She was smiling at him.

“Tomorrow we can start on recognising letters. Soon you’ll be reading to me.”

Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t quite so sure about that, but he felt that little spark of hope reignite in his chest once more, and this time, he felt no desire to try and put it out again before it could cause any harm. He might not have any hope of getting out, but the gift of literacy was one that Belle could leave with him for good.

X

By the time they had reached their next destination, Rumpelstiltskin had worked out a plan.

It had been a grey and miserable day interspersed with showers of rain, and the takings had not been good. Zoso was not pleased, and the oddities had felt the fallout from his ire; the jarring sound of his stick smacking against the bars of the cages had resounded throughout the camp well into the evening after all the patrons had long since left and the circus big top lay deserted.

Belle was sitting by the bars, reading in the light of the brazier, and Rumpelstiltskin had finished spinning for the day, waiting on fresh roving to be delivered in the morning. Presently, Belle looked up and smiled, beckoning him over.

“Would you like to continue our lessons?” She patted the straw beside her. Rumpelstiltskin nodded, but as eager as he was to continue his learning with Belle, he had to discuss his idea with her first. As he sat by her, he looked up towards the corner of the cage for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

“What’s up there?” Belle asked. “You keep glancing up there and sighing. What’s wrong?”

Rumpelstiltskin took a deep breath. “I think I know how you can get out of here.”

Belle closed the book with a snap, her eyes searching his face for any signs of dishonesty.

“Really?” she whispered. “Oh, Rumpel, that would be truly wonderful. How?”

Rumpelstiltskin pointed up at the corner that had so transfixed him for the past couple of days. “That’s where the top bolt to the cage door is,” he said. “It’s on the outside, obviously, and it’s easy to open from there, but we can’t reach it from the inside. Well, I can’t reach it.”

He had tried, more than once in the past, and all he had received for his troubles was a sharp thwack over the knuckles from Zoso’s stick.

“I think that, with your wrists being as flexible as they are, you could reach that top bolt and slide it. Once that’s open, you could lever the door open enough to squeeze out.”

For a long time, Belle said nothing. She was staring up at the corner, but it was clear from her eyes that she was miles away, beyond the bars of their cage and off living a life in the freedom that she deserved. At last, she shook herself out of the daydream and got to her feet, moving slowly towards the door. She took a hold of the bars, her grip white-knuckled.

“I’m too short to reach from the floor,” she said. “If you give me a leg up, I might be able to get a footing on the hoarding.”

Rumpelstiltskin wasted no time in coming over and giving her a boost, and a moment later, Belle was balanced daintily on the hoarding board that was attached to the bars on the outside, standing on tiptoe as she reached through the bars and bent her wrist at an impossible angle to reach the bolt.

“I’ve got it!” she exclaimed in an excited whisper, grinning at him over her shoulder, but a moment later, her face fell. “There’s another lock on it; it just won’t draw across.”

“Damn.” Rumpelstiltskin had missed that. He knew every inch of the cage on the inside, and he knew exactly the sounds that all the locks and bolts made, but he had never seen them up close himself.

“I think…” Belle began, stretching out a little further. “I think I can…”

She never finished the thought, as she lost her footing on the hoarding and tumbled downwards with a sharp cry of fear, the sound of rending canvas filling the air as she fell. Rumpelstiltskin shot out his arms to catch her and they collapsed into an ungainly heap on the floor of the cage.

Outside, Rumpel could hear Zoso shouting about the noise, and the clacking of his stick on his stick on the ground as he came over to investigate the disturbance, but he was more immediately concerned with Belle in his arms. For a moment, neither of them spoke, both just looking at each other with a mute fear of what could have happened.

“Thank you.” Belle’s voice was barely above a breath.

“You’re, erm, welcome. Are you all right?”

Belle nodded unsurely, but before either of them could get to their feet again, Zoso’s face appeared, looking through the rip in the canvas. His brow was furrowed, expression equal parts perplexed and irritated.

“What the devil’s going on in there?”

Killian appeared behind Zoso, smirking as he saw the scene within the cage.

“I would have thought that was obvious. It seems that there’s life in the old crocodile yet.”

Zoso gave Killian a disgusted look and cuffed him round the ear. “Fix up the canvas tomorrow.”

He left them, stomping back towards his caravan, and Killian stayed leering at them for a moment more until Zoso snapped at him and he followed, reluctant lapdog that he was.

Once they were alone again, Belle pulled away from Rumpelstiltskin.

“I’m sorry, I…”

“It’s no matter. I’m just glad that you’re all right.”

“Yes. I’m… Ouch!”

As Belle got to her feet again, Rumpelstiltskin saw that she had not come away from her fall unscathed. A long graze from the hoarding was welling with beads of blood along her calf, and he grimaced at the sight of it.

“We’d better get that cleaned.”

There was a pair of freshly washed socks hanging to dry on the spinning wheel, and Rumpelstiltskin grabbed one as Belle settled herself down on her bedding and stretched her leg out gingerly.

“Oh, Rumpel, I don’t want to ruin your socks.”

“They’ll wash again.” He dabbed carefully at the graze. “I guess that it was all for nothing in the end. I’m sorry I got your hopes up.”

Belle shook her head. “No, you don’t have to be sorry for that. That shows that you have hope again, and you were all out when I first came here. Never apologise for having hope, Rumpel.”

“But…”

“Besides, I think that it could still work. We could still get out of here.”

Rumpel looked up at her sharply. Whilst he had been planning Belle’s great escape, he had never included himself in that equation. The entire plan hinged on Belle being able to get through a small gap that he had no hope of managing, but that her wonderful joints would allow with ease. His train of thought must have shown clearly on his face, as Belle smiled and reached out, her hand coming to rest on his where he was still dabbing gently at her wound.

“Do you really think that after everything you’ve been through, and after everything that you’ve done for me, that I would leave you behind when I got out of here?”

“It wasn’t that,” Rumpelstiltskin protested. “I know that you wouldn’t do anything like that purposefully. I just think that it would be easier on your own.”

“No.” Belle’s voice was firm and brooked no argument. “If we leave, Rumpel, then we leave together.” She glanced over at the rip in the canvas, looking out at the other cages beyond. “If I get out, then _everyone_ gets out. Curi, Old White Rab, Quinn… They’re all in the same position as we are, Rumpel. We can’t just leave them here to deal with the fallout from Zoso and Killian after we get away.”

“Belle…” Rumpelstiltskin didn’t even know where to start with all of the things that could go wrong with that idea. As much as he agreed with her concerning the safety of their fellow oddities once he and Belle were discovered missing, he didn’t want her to get her hopes up and for something that was simply unfeasible. If a mass break-out was possible, then they would surely have done it by now. “For a start, I won’t be able to get out of the gap that you can open up when the bolt slides across – if you can even get it across.”

Belle nodded. “Yes, I think I should be able to get it across, as long as I have something to use as leverage, something small and pointy. And there’s another way out of the cage, Rumpel. Once I’m on the outside, at least.”

Rumpel raised an eyebrow and Belle rolled her eyes. “Once I’m out, I can let you out of the door, silly.”

He looked over at the door. “What do you plan to do with the rest of the locks?”

“Well, once I’m on the outside, I can have a go at them with the small and pointy thing I used on the bolt, or I can smack them with rocks, or I can hope that Killian’s got drunk on rum again and sneak his keys, or something. I’ll cross that bridge later.”

It seemed remarkably simple now that she had said it, and Rumpelstiltskin allowed himself a moment of hope. Suddenly a life outside of the cage seemed almost within his reach. He shook his head, trying to stave off the optimism before it got too great a hold on him. Despite the firm conviction in Belle’s words, there were still so many things that could go wrong, and they would only end up in a worse situation than the one they were already in.

“Hey.” He felt Belle’s fingertips on his cheek and he looked up at her. “Don’t give up hope. If you can have hope for me, then you can have hope for yourself. I’m going to get out, and I’m going to take you with me, and I’m going to get everyone else out too. We can do this Rumpel. As long as we’re together, I think that we can do anything.”

The first brush of her lips against his was as intoxicating as it was unexpected, and Rumpelstiltskin gave a little squeak of surprise against her mouth before deciding that kissing Belle was a good thing, no matter how overwhelming it might be. Her hands came up to cup his cheeks, and as she pulled away, breathless, she nudged her forehead against his.

“You’re a very special man, Rumpelstiltskin,” she whispered. “In fact, I think you’re the most remarkable person I’ve ever met.”

“You’re also… very remarkable,” Rumpelstiltskin managed. He was having a little trouble processing coherent thoughts, and he waited for some semblance of normality to return. Thankfully, Belle didn’t seem to be expecting him to say anything else. Hopefully she understood the way he was feeling.

Her leg clean, Belle lay down on her bedding, keeping the graze above her blankets so that it could dry out. Her hand found Rumpelstiltskin’s in the dimness, and she squeezed his fingers tightly. He returned the pressure, still going over the events of the last few minutes in his mind. It was going to be a long time before he got to sleep.

At length, Belle’s grip fell slack as slumber overtook her completely, and Rumpelstiltskin got up from her side, still wide awake with his thoughts in freefall. He went over to the spinning wheel, running his hands over the warm wood, and remembering all the good times that he had seen with it, and all of the bad times that it had seen him through. It was the most lasting connection to Aunt Elvira that he had, and he was going to have to say goodbye to it. When they escaped, they would have to travel light, and the wheel could not come with them. As sacrilegious as it seemed to be leaving it behind when it had been such an important part of his life, its foreseeable loss was something of a symbolic turning point for him. Leaving behind the spinning wheel meant that he was leaving behind this life, which had brought him so much pain. The wheel had brought those brief flickers of light in that ocean of darkness, but now, he had Belle. Belle had brought so much light into his life from the moment she had arrived at the circus, and if she was going to help him escape, then she was going to continue bringing him light for a long time to come.

Rumpelstiltskin sighed and gave the wheel a pull, listening to its soothing creak. They had to actually get out of the cage to start with, and once they’d done that, then they needed to leave the camp, and once they’d done that, they needed to get somewhere safe. He would always remember the tales that Elvira had told him of the safe places for their kind, but at the same time, he could never truly believe in them, as much as he wanted them to be true. Even if such a wonderful place existed, he had no idea where they would even begin to look for it. Once they left the camp, it would be a difficult road ahead of them. Belle would soon realise that he was correct, and that her being alone would have been easier than having her with him. She could hide in plain sight, pass herself off as perfectly normal. There would be nothing connecting her with her previous life from the moment she stepped outside of the confines of Zoso’s domain.

He, however, would always look like he was on the run from a freakshow.

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head angrily, forcibly stopping the wheel. The structure shuddered, complaining at being so ill-used when normally he treated it with such love. He shouldn’t be thinking like this. If Belle was awake and he was discussing all these fears with her, then she would be having none of it. The life inside the cages was bleak and miserable, and not an existence that he would ever wish on anyone, but it was the only life that he had ever known and naturally, he was scared of leaving it behind and embarking upon a journey into the unknown. The fear that whatever might be out there beyond these cages might be worse than a life inside them was a very real one.

Could there be a life worse than this, though? No matter what awaited them in the future, they would have their freedom, and that was something precious, something that Rumpelstiltskin could not even remember.

He needed to be brave. Belle was counting on him to be brave and to help her. She had told him that he needed to have hope for himself as well as her. If Belle believed in him, then at least that made one of them.

Rumpelstiltskin left the spinning wheel and moved over to the rip in the canvas, staring out at the other covered cages, listening to the muted songs. Belle wanted to get everyone out, and Rumpelstiltskin could understand her sentiment, but they could not take everyone with them when they left. There was safety in numbers, certainly, but if they were travelling in too large a group then they would attract too much attention, and they would be far more likely to be caught and sent straight back to Zoso. All the same, his fellow oddities deserved their freedom just as much as he and Belle did. He could only hope that they would know what to do with it when it came to them.

Hopefully it would come soon. The tension that had built up in him over the past few days of planning was almost unbearable, and if he had to carry it around any longer then he thought that he might burst. They were camped on the outskirts of a large city; although he did not know where they were on the map, he knew that if they were going to hide, it was easier in a place where there were many people, and a couple more furtive travellers trying not to draw attention to themselves would hopefully go unnoticed. If they were going to make a break for it, then it would have to be now, before they moved on to the next destination. The circus never stayed too long at one place, the strictly limited seasons acting as a lucrative draw, people flocking in their droves to see the attractions whilst they had the chance.

As he turned to go back to his own bedding, and hopefully get a few hours sleep before the day’s pantomime began once more, something caught his eye in the darkness. The moonlight shining in through the rip glinted silver on the spindle of the wheel.

The solution came to him immediately.

Belle needed something small and pointy to work the bolt. The spindle was certainly small and pointy. If that would do the trick, then that was all they would need. Their escape plan could be carried out the very next night, if Belle so chose, and if they had the spindle, then Rumpelstiltskin would not be leaving the spinning wheel behind entirely.

He went over to the wheel, giving the wood another reverent stroke.

“Sorry to do this to you, old girl,” he said. “But it’s for the best, and I think that Aunt Elvira would agree with me.”

Even in the darkest days, she had never given up hope that Rumpelstiltskin would see a better life than the one they were living. She would want him to take the spindle if that was what it took to get him on the right path. As he sat down at the bench and began to detach the spindle from the wheel, he fancied that he could almost hear her voice, soft and reassuring in his ear.

_You’re doing the right thing, Rumpel. Be brave for me now; go and find your happy ending._

She had told him so many stories when he had been young, and without fail, they had all had happy endings. _Everyone deserves a happy ending,_ she had told him. _Even us, although some people may not think that we do, just remember that they don’t know anything about us. We deserve a happy ending just as much as anyone else, and never lose sight of that._

Rumpelstiltskin glanced over at Belle, sleeping peacefully.  He had lost sight of that, until she had come into his life. She embodied so many of Elvira’s ideals, and it was a sad thought that the two of them would never meet in this life.

It took a while, but at last the spindle came loose without damage to the rest of the wheel. Come rain or shine, bad times or good, Rumpelstiltskin had always tended carefully to the spinning wheel, and now was no different. He lay the spindle down beside Belle where she would see it when she woke and made his way to his own bed. With that part of the problem solved, he knew that he would sleep easier. No matter what the next day might bring, they were one step closer to their freedom.

X

He could hear Belle moving around in the cage, and the sounds of the circus coming to life beyond the canvas. Morning had come, but Rumpelstiltskin didn’t want to open his eyes just yet. If the previous evening had all been a pleasant dream of escape, then he didn’t want to lose it just yet. Presently, he felt Belle’s warm fingers brush a loose strand of hair out of his face, and then her lips pecked a soft kiss to his forehead.

“It’s perfect,” she whispered in her ear. “Thank you, Rumpel.”

As he finally opened his eyes, it took him a moment to realise what she was talking about. The spindle was gone from the place that he had left it last night, and it was not magically reattached to the wheel. Everything was real. It hadn’t been a dream. He and Belle had really thought up a plan to escape. If that part was real, then that must mean that their kiss was real as well. He smiled to himself at the memory of it as the canvases were rolled up. Zoso’s voice brought him back to reality fully; his disturbed night had done nothing to improve his mood, and he seemed to take the fact that Rumpelstiltskin and Belle looked to be, of all things, _happy_ , almost as a personal insult. He snarled through the bars, but Rumpelstiltskin didn’t let it perturb him. He was more than used to Zoso’s rages after so many years. Belle shivered, but a look to Rumpel reassured her.

Outside, Zoso and Killian were in discussion with the circus ringmaster. The weather was poor again this morning, portending another day of lean profits, and with the turn of the seasons just around the corner, sunnier skies were unlikely to be forthcoming. They were likely to be moving soon.

Belle stood at the bars, wringing her hands as she flexed her wrists, and Rumpelstiltskin came over to her, hoping to snatch some of the conversation.

“Tonight,” Belle said. “If we’re going to do it, it has to be tonight.”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded his agreement. “Yes. We’re going to do it. Tonight.”

In the cage opposite, Curi was watching them with her head on one side. Rumpelstiltskin wondered how much she had surmised from their furtive behaviour. Did she know that something was going to happen, and happen tonight? At least he knew that he could trust her with their secret; even if she had spoken English, she would never rat them out to Zoso and Killian. None of the oddities would. It was an unspoken rule that had always been in place. Us against them. Us against the world. The solidarity between them, even though they had never properly met in person, was truly remarkable.

No matter what it took, they had to get everyone out. Even though a voice inside the back of his mind was screaming that it would all end in tears, Rumpelstiltskin knew that even if they did not know it yet, the rest of their little freakshow family was counting on them. Belle was the catalyst that they had needed all these years, and it was up to her, and him, to do the right thing, and to repay that solidarity in the best way.

It was with a renewed confidence that Rumpelstiltskin went about his day. Not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he and Belle were planning something, he tried to act in the way he normally did. Belle was quieter than usual, acting meek and timid, bending her wrists and elbows on demand for the gawping public as Zoso hung around outside their cage, drumming up custom. Perhaps he knew that they were planning something and that was why he stayed so close all day; the incident with the canvas during the night had put him on alert. For a horrible moment, he wondered if he would even leave them alone come the evening, or if he was anticipating something. Up on the roof of the cage, Killian was fixing the tear. Rumpelstiltskin could hear him grumbling up there, but he paid no mind. Zoso and Killian’s proximity made it impossible to discuss their plans, but Rumpelstiltskin trusted Belle. They’d had a trial run yesterday. They knew what they were doing. At least, Rumpelstiltskin thought that they knew what they were doing. There were large sections of the plan that they’d not thought up beyond crossing that bridge when they came to it, but when push came to shove, Belle could get out, and deep down in his heart, Rumpelstiltskin knew that was all that mattered. He wanted to get out, and he hoped that he could, and he wanted to get everyone else out, but at the end of the day, as long as Belle could get out, then he would be happy, and none of it would have been in vain.

The canvas mended, Killian jumped off the roof and looked through the bars.

“Maybe you shouldn’t get so wild tonight, princess,” he said, looking Belle up and down. “We can’t have you tearing the place down in your ardour.”

Belle just smiled: a disarming, innocent smile. Considering that her interactions with Killian usually consisted of curse words and obscene hand gestures made even more emphatic by her bent back fingers, that should probably have been his first warning that something was amiss, but Killian had never been a man of many brains, and when half of those brains were heading in a southward direction then he was fairly susceptible.

She reached out through the bars, brushing a finger down his chest. Killian raised an eyebrow; perhaps he wasn’t as susceptible as Rumpelstiltskin had first thought, and he was just rising from his seat, ready to intervene by any means necessary.

“Be careful, princess,” Killian said. “Looks like your crocodile might be getting jealous of the fact you like a real man.”

Belle just laughed, then moved away from the bars with a flirtatious little wave over her shoulder. As she turned back to Rumpelstiltskin, she gave him a wink, surreptitiously showing him her other hand. Inside it was a key, one that he knew usually resided in Killian’s breast pocket; it was the key to his caravan.

“Just in case we need it later,” she muttered in his ear as she passed him, making to stow the key under the straw in the corner of their cage, the same place that she had hidden the spindle before he woke. “Now, after that, I really feel the need to wash my hands.”

Rumpelstiltskin couldn’t say he blamed her, and he had to admire her bravery and resourcefulness. Across the way, Curi was grinning. She definitely knew that something was happening, and it looked like she was very much looking forward to it.

The evening could not come quickly enough, although Rumpelstiltskin thought that his anticipation stemmed more from worry than from excitement. What if something went wrong? There were so many things that could go wrong that he had lost count of all of them, so it was probably a good idea to stop worrying about what could go wrong and focus instead on everything that was going to go right.

It was no use. He was starting to panic already, and they hadn’t even started yet. Belle took his hand and gave a little squeeze of reassurance, and Rumpelstiltskin took a deep breath, counting to ten and trying to let go of the tension. The more scared he was, the more likely that something would go wrong by default. The day continued to wear on, and finally dusk started to fall. The braziers were lit, and the patrons coming into the show began to show signs of being continuously worse for wear. This was the time when all of the oddities retreated into the darkest depths of their cages. Drunkards could make their own entertainment, as Rumpelstiltskin and Belle knew all too well from her first days in the cage. There was no point in giving them any further fuel for their fire.

One patron caught Rumpelstiltskin’s eye as he looked out over the show as it wound down for the night. An elderly woman, wrapped up in a cloak and shawl and trying to keep a low profile, was scurrying about from cage to cage with a speed and nimbleness that belied her advanced years. At each exhibit, she read the hoardings telling her the oddity’s stage name, and then peered inside at the person in question, before shaking her head and moving on. When she came to Belle and Rumpelstiltskin’s cage, the last one before the entrance and exit, she did the same, staring into the depths and dismissing them with a sigh. Rumpelstiltskin wondered what she could be looking for, but then she was gone, hurrying out of the sideshow and down the path that led towards the town. He kept watching her long after she was gone out of sight.

At last, the show was closed, and Killian and the other hands were packing up for the night. The nervous tension was only increasing, and it was all Rumpelstiltskin could do to stay still and not pace up and down to work some of it off. Every second seemed to drag by like it was an hour; with the moment of their escape so close at hand, there was something almost palpable in the air, and with every minute that passed, Rumpelstiltskin became more and more convinced that something was going to go wrong at the last minute and Zoso would appear to scupper all their plans.

The canvas was rolled down, and Belle went to keep watch through the inexpertly repaired tear. After what felt like an age, she looked back at him.

“It’s time.”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded, not quite trusting himself with words at that moment. He retrieved the spindle from its hiding place, and then came back to the edge of the cage to give Belle her leg up to get onto the hoarding. She swayed a little as she found her footing, giving a hiss of pain, and Rumpelstiltskin instinctively reached out to grab her legs to steady her. They couldn’t risk another fall, and at least the impropriety of him holding onto her knees gave him something to think about other than the sheer terror of what they were undertaking.

“All right, I’m steady. Pass me the spindle. I’ve got this.”

He held up the spindle and Belle poked it out through the cage bars, wobbling precariously on her perch. Rumpelstiltskin couldn’t watch, and he squeezed his eyes tight shut, just holding onto Belle’s knees and hoping that she knew what she was doing. If she dropped the spindle, they would be well and truly stuck.

There was the heavy thud of something metal hitting the grass outside the cage, and Rumpelstiltskin’s heart leapt to his mouth. This was it. They were done for.

“Got it.”

The familiar scrape of the bolt cut through the air and stopped suddenly; it was very loud in the quiet camp, and they waited several moments before trying again to make sure that there were no sounds from outside.

As they began to move the bolt once more, however, a noise did come from outside. The rest of the camp was singing; all of them together at once, creating a much louder harmony than normal. Rumpelstiltskin’s heart was beating painfully. Whilst they might be masking the sounds of the escape, they would also be attracting Zoso’s attention, and if he came out to tell them to pipe down, then…

There was a soft creak, and Rumpelstiltskin knew that Belle had managed to shoulder the door open a little.

“Give me another push,” she whispered.

Rumpelstiltskin shoved her up from the knees and she gave another little gasp of pain as she pulled herself up into the gap and wriggled through. Before he knew it, she was on the other side of the bars, using the canvas to climb back down to the ground.

Rumpelstiltskin couldn’t help but grin. Against all the odds, it was working.

Just as Belle’s toes touched the ground, Zoso’s shout resounded through the camp. Belle froze, pressing herself close against the bars, and Rumpelstiltskin could only hope that the canvas would hide her enough.

“Will you lot shut up!” Zoso hollered. The singing immediately stopped, and Belle and Rumpelstiltskin waited with bated breath until they heard the door to Zoso’s caravan close again.

Belle let out a long sigh of relief before grabbing the spindle and setting to work on the large padlock that was keeping the door closed fully, the large padlock that had been standing between Rumpelstiltskin and his freedom for longer than he could remember.

It took a long time, with frequent pauses every time the metal scraped too loudly or another noise outside spooked them, but at last, there was a resounding clunk. The door opened a little way and Belle climbed back inside the cage, rolling up their blankets.

“We’ll take as much as we can carry,” she said. “Bring the chest.”

Rumpelstiltskin grabbed it. His heart was beating so hard it was painful in his chest as he approached the door, pushing it open and staring out at his path to freedom. Belle jumped down.

“Come on,” she said. She held out a hand, giving him an encouraging smile, and Rumpelstiltskin grabbed it like a lifeline, jumping down onto the grass. Together, they slipped under the canvas and into the wide world.

It was overwhelming. From behind the bars, the world outside had looked big, but he had never had a true sense of the scale until now. The sky, glittering with stars, stretched out into an infinity above him, and all of a sudden, Rumpelstiltskin felt very scared and small. Belle was tugging on his hand, trying to get him to move, but he was rooted to the spot.

“It’s okay, Rumpel,” she said, touching his face and in doing so, bringing his attention back to her wide, earnest eyes. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. I know it’s scary, but just focus on me. We’ll get you through this.”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded, and together, they made their way across the camp to Curi’s cage and ducked under the canvas.

She was waiting for them, sitting right by the door, and she grinned as Belle began to climb up the outside of the cage to reach the top bolt. The process of getting the door open didn’t same to take anywhere near as long as it had done on their own cage. Now that they were out, and escape was in within their grasp, time was of the essence, and caution was gradually going by the wayside.

Rumpelstiltskin lifted Curi down from her cage, and she kissed both him and Belle on the cheek in gratitude. Since she couldn’t walk on her backwards feet and had trouble staying upright at the best of times, he wasn’t sure how she was going to manage, but once her feet touched the ground, she was down on all fours and had vanished out of sight between the wagon wheels.

One down, more to go. They sped on tiptoe to the next cage and began to repeat the process. By now, it was clear to the entire camp that this was a breakout. Everyone was peering out from the canvases and gathering together their belongings, and everyone was keeping quiet despite the look of excitement on each face.

A few, like Curi, dashed away as soon as they were able to. A few more, like Rumpelstiltskin, had been inside their cages for so long that it took them a few moments to come to terms with their new freedom.

Everything was going remarkably smoothly. Too smoothly. When he heard the shout, Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t even surprised that they’d been caught and that the alarm was being raised. What he was surprised about was the core of iron that had suddenly sprung up inside him. He was not going back inside that cage without a fight. Not now that he’d had a taste of freedom.

It was one of the hands who’d caught them, looking out of his tent at just the wrong moment.

“Hey! Stop that! Come back! What are you doing? Mr Zoso! Mr Killian! They’re getting away!”

From then, the camp became utter chaos and confusion. Caravan doors were slammed open, voices coming from all directions, and Rumpelstiltskin was sure that they were done for.

“Go,” he whispered to Belle urgently. They were at the last cage, the one closest to Killian’s caravan – Old White Rab, the albino.

Belle shook her head. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

“Please, Belle!”

“You should both go,” Rab said calmly. “I’m old and blind, I’ll only slow everyone down.”

Belle looked from Rab, to Rumpel, then back over her shoulder as someone knocked a brazier over in the hue and cry and the canvas on one of the now-empty cages caught alight. Above the sounds of the melee, Rumpelstiltskin could hear the whinnying of the horses tied up beyond the cages.

“I’ll be back,” Belle said, jumping down from the bars. “Get Rab out!”

She ran away from the cage, yelling to Quinn the Wolf-Boy as she went, and a moment later, Quinn was scaling Rab’s cage and bashing at the top bolt with a rock. Rumpelstiltskin worked the bottom lock, and then the door was open. Quinn grabbed Rab, guiding him away to safety with a toothy grin back at Rumpelstiltskin, who gave the smallest of sighs of relief before a heavy hand came down on his shoulder, fingers digging in. He felt the point of a cold metal hook at his throat and gritted his teeth.

“I might have known that you and your little princess would be the ringleaders,” Killian sneered. “Although it looks like she’s gone and left you in the lurch, Crocodile.”

Rumpelstiltskin said nothing, not daring to move. Belle had a plan, he knew it. He just had to trust that she’d get back in time before Killian slit his throat.

The sound of galloping hooves thundered through the camp. Belle had turned the horses loose and they were trampling everything in their path, sending oddities and hands alike running for cover. The fire was spreading to the next cage, and Rumpelstiltskin was beginning to see a way out. Belle was at the back of the stampeding herd, riding the gentle white mare that pulled her and Rumpelstiltskin’s cage.

As alarmed as Killian was by the sudden appearance of the horses, he didn’t let go of Rumpelstiltskin, just pressing the point of his hook in deeper. Rumpelstiltskin held his breath. Something had to happen, he couldn’t be stuck in this stalemate forever.

There was a low growl from somewhere around his knees.

“What the…”

Both men looked down to see the two tigers from the show, their green eyes sparkling in the firelight. Curi was crouched between them, petting their thick fur and cooing in their ears as if they were pet lap cats.

“Oh no. Oh God…”

Killian let go of Rumpelstiltskin and ran hell for leather back towards his caravan, the tigers following hot on his heels. Zoso, who had entered the fray to see what was going on and to bark instructions to Killian and the hands, was caught up in the pursuit, and both men were bundled into the caravan, the tigers snapping and clawing at the door.

“Rumpel!”

He looked up at Belle’s shout and caught the key that was flying through the air towards him. Curi prowled along beside him as he went over to the caravan, and the tigers immediately backed down as she crooned to them.

The key turned in the lock and Rumpelstiltskin raced down the steps again. Belle had managed to stop her mount, and Rumpelstiltskin tossed the parcel of their belongings up to her before awkwardly climbing up behind.

The camp was still in chaos as they left, the hands more concerned with putting out the flames before they reached the big top than with catching the runaway oddities. Everyone had scattered, Quinn and Rab were nowhere to be seen, and Curi had calmed one of the horses and was riding off into the forest, the tigers alongside her.

It was Rumpelstiltskin’s last image of the sideshow, and he turned away to look forwards, towards a better future. It was going to be hard, but it could not be worse than what was lying behind him.

He had his arms tightly around Belle, and he buried his face in her hair, breathing in straw and smoke. If it had not been for her, then he would never have dreamed he could ever be in this position.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

Once they got a decent distance between themselves and the blazing camp, Belle slowed the horse to a walk, and they both slid off its back to let it rest for a while. The town was still a couple of miles away, and they would hopefully reach it before day break. Belle’s hand found Rumpelstiltskin’s as they walked, and she went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

“I couldn’t have done it without you, you know,” she said presently.

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t respond. There were too many emotions battling for dominance in his mind, and he couldn’t think of the right way to express everything that he was feeling.

He was free. For the first time in his life, there were no bars, and there was no-one looming over him. He had the entire rest of his life ahead of him, and he was hopefully going to spend it with Belle. She had given him the courage to come this far, and right now, in this very big and very scary and very new world, he needed that courage to help him get through the coming period of uncertainty. Maybe, just maybe, once they had found their feet, they could truly build a life together.

The thought of it was both terrifying and exhilarating, and Rumpelstiltskin couldn’t wait to start.

 


	3. Chapter 3

They reached the town in the early hours of the morning, just as day was beginning to dawn and people were starting to go about their business. Rumpelstiltskin hung back as they approached the buildings, afraid to show his face. Although the news of what had happened to the show during the night could not have spread this far yet, no doubt someone would have seen the flames and put two and two together. Whilst Belle would be all right, there could be no doubting where he had come from.

Belle caught his hesitation and gave his hand a squeeze, grabbing one of the blankets off the back of the horse.

“Here, wrap up in this. We can pretend you’re sick.”

Mostly covered up and feeling a lot more confident of being able to get around without detection, Rumpelstiltskin helped Belle to bundle up the rest of their things, and Belle patted the horse’s rump to send it on its way. As sad as he was to see it go when it had been such a good companion to them over the last few hours, and instrumental to their escape, Rumpelstiltskin knew that it was far better placed to survive on its own out in the world than he and Belle were.

They entered the town as it was beginning to wake up around them, and Rumpelstiltskin kept his head down, buried in the folds of the blanket and only looking up to make sure that he wasn’t about to bump into something. Belle’s hand was firm and tight around his as she guided him through the streets. But although she seemed calm and collected on the outside, Rumpel could tell that where was still a great deal of unease to her.

He tried to be brave and think positively, but with so many buildings springing up around them, it was hard. Even when he’d been within the confines of his cage, the places that they had stopped in had always been open fields, with the towns a long way from his mind and looking small in the distance. Now that he was in one, he could see that the towns were not small at all, and for a moment he wished that they had gone off in the opposite direction and followed Curi into the woods.

No. That would not do. Rumpelstiltskin stood a little taller in his conviction. The entire reason behind masterminding the escape plan was so that Belle could lead a normal life, and she could hardly do that if she was hiding in the woods with him. Perhaps it would be better if they went their separate ways after all, although Belle had said that she would not leave him behind, and in all honesty, Rumpel did not want to be parted from her, however selfish a thought that might be. So, he kept holding her hand, returning the brief pressure every time she squeezed it, a comforting gesture for the both of them in this big wide world in which they didn’t have a plan, and in which Rumpelstiltskin had no idea how to survive.

“We need to find somewhere to stay where they’ll let us lie low and keep ourselves to ourselves,” Belle said. “A room in a lodging house would be best. Inns tend to expect only short-term visitors who are travelling through, and we don’t know how long it might take us to find our feet here. It would be cheaper too.”

The thought of expense brought Rumpel’s mind back full circle to their current predicament.

“Belle, we have no money.”

“It’s all right. I have a way to release some capital, and we can always offer to work our way. You can still spin, and I’m not averse to housemaid’s work.”

Rumpel nodded, although he was still unsure that anyone would let them stay on that basis.

“I think I can get us a little ready cash for food now though.” She pointed out a shop over the way that was just opening up for business for the day, a middle-aged man taking its shutters down. “You see the three gold circles on the window? That’s the sign of a pawnbroker.” Belle reached round to the back of her neck and unfastened her locket. “I should be able to pawn this for something.”

“Belle, that was your mother’s.”

“I know. Now it’s mine, and I don’t think that she would begrudge me using it to ensure my future survival.”

She turned the hold locket over and over in her fingers, and Rumpel knew that despite her words, it still pained her to part with it. He closed his hands over hers.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t have to. We’ll manage some other way.” He didn’t know how, but he hoped that if he said it with enough gumption, then she would believe him.

Belle shook her head. “No, this is the quickest way. Do the brave thing, and bravery will follow. Besides, pawning it doesn’t mean that I’m saying goodbye forever. Just parting with it until I can buy it back.”

Rumpel appreciated her optimism, but he knew from the many conversations that he’d overheard between Killian and Zoso over the years that pawnbroking tickets were rarely redeemed, and the items were rarely bought back by their original owners.

She broke away from his hold on her hand, patting his arm. “Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”

He nodded, watching her make her way over the road as she approached the pawnbroker, and he gestured for him to follow her inside the shop.

It was the first time that they had been truly apart since Belle had first been put into his cage, and Rumpel hovered in the shadows, watching the pawnbroker’s door. He was in no position to protect her if something went wrong, but he knew that Belle was capable of quick thinking and could take care of herself. The events of the previous evening had proved that admirably. It was hard to imagine that it was only a few short hours ago that they had caused such chaos and made good their escape. Cautiously, he sniffed at the blanket that was enshrouding him; he could smell the smoke from the burning sideshow on it and he hoped that no-one would be paying him that close attention – or Belle for that matter. Just because he knew that she could handle most unexpected situations didn’t mean that he couldn’t be worried about her. He was so worried about everything that was happening to them that Belle provided a good focal point for all the worries to crystallise onto.

After what seemed like an age, but could only have been a few minutes, Belle returned, tucking tightly rolled bank notes into the sleeve of her bodice.

“He gave me a good price, and he let me take out the picture of Mother before he took it off me. Now, let’s find some breakfast and a roof over our heads for tonight. We passed a house a couple of streets back which I think would be suitable.”

They made their way back to the house via the market in the town centre, picking up some supplies for the next few days. It ate into their limited money supply, but even if they couldn’t find somewhere to stay, they had the blankets and they had food to keep them going, and if necessary they could move onto the next town. Rumpel didn’t like to think that far ahead but his mind refused to let him stop preparing for the worst-case scenario.

The events of the night were finally catching up with him, and he could feel the tiredness settling in his legs like leaden weights. The rush of excitement that had accompanied their escape was beginning to wear off and give way to fatigue, and he just wanted to sit down somewhere and rest his aching feet. He hadn’t had this much exercise for a very long time, ever since he had been a boy and had run around the cage for hours on end, much to Aunt Elvira’s amusement. Belle had bought plums at the market, and it had been so long since he’d tasted the sweet fruit that for a moment, as they walked along, he was able to forget all the potential misfortunes that were pressing against his mind and just enjoy the taste.

Belle caught his little smile of pleasure within the folds of his blanket, and she gave a smile back. Thankfully, although his swaddled state was attracting a few looks, it was nowhere near as many as if he had not been covered up, and since most people thought that he was so wrapped up as a result of some kind of illness of unknown infectiousness, they were mainly keeping their distance. That suited Rumpelstiltskin just fine. The fewer people he came into contact with, the less was their chance of being found out and shipped straight back to Zoso.

“Here we are.” Belle ducked into a side street, pulling him behind her, and Rumpel looked up at the building that they had stopped in front of. It was a nondescript place, a sign on the wall advertising the Lucas Lodging House and giving prices for a night’s stay. Belle counted out their remaining money.

“There’s enough for three days in advance,” she said. “Hopefully no-one will ask any questions, and that should be plenty of time for us to find another source of income as long as we’re not fussy.”

“After everything that’s happened, I don’t think I could ever be fussy,” Rumpel said. “I’m glad to do anything that doesn’t involve a cage.”

Belle reached inside the blanket to touch his cheek, rubbing her thumb gently over his skin.

“I promise you, Rumpel, that you will never be inside a cage again. I’ll make sure of it.”

There was so much truth and fierceness in her voice that Rumpel couldn’t help but believe her, and his heart swelled in gratitude.

“Come on. Let’s get inside and get some rest. It’s been a long day already.”

The church clock began to strike nine, and they both laughed, but Rumpel still did not follow Belle inside. The snide little voice in the back of his mind had told him that this was the first time he had been inside a proper building since he was six years old and had left his father’s cottage to make the journey to Zoso’s. The thought of going inside again shouldn’t have given him quite as much fear as it did, and he didn’t really want to admit it to Belle. After so long living on the road, he should have been glad to get into a place that had more than just thick canvas to protect it from the elements. He would certainly be glad of a place to sleep that didn’t threaten to leak every time there was heavy rain and the wind was coming from a certain direction, but a part of him could still not get used to the idea just yet.

“I think that you’d better go in and get it all sorted out,” he said. “They might take one look at me and run screaming in the opposite direction.”

Belle just looked at him. “It’ll be fine,” she said. “I promise. Please come inside, Rumpel. You don’t have to say anything. I just don’t want to leave you alone out here.”

Rumpel nodded his assent, letting her take his hand again and pull him inside the lodging house.

It was a dim place; its position on the side street did not lend itself to much natural light coming into the hallway, but Rumpel could see sunlight on the landing upstairs coming in through an open window. It gave the impression that the house was underground, and that going upstairs would bring him out into the real world again. He looked around the entrance and at the little desk with its arrivals book. He hoped that Belle would take care of everything. His reading was coming along slowly, but writing was still a way off yet.

It was a dusty place, but well maintained, nonetheless. It was like a place out of time, that rarely saw custom, and so this public-facing part had not been as thoroughly kept up as the rest of it. He couldn’t decide whether this was a point in its favour or not. On one hand, a lack of other guests meant that there were less people to bump into, but the proprietors were more likely to take an interest in their only patrons.

Belle tiptoed around the entry way, peering through all the other doors that led off it in search of someone who could help them, but apparently the place was deserted.

“Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” she murmured, before shaking herself and taking a deep breath, going over to the desk and ringing the little bell for attention.

In a back room, Rumpelstiltskin heard the sounds of someone startling, and then things being bumped into and knocked over as the occupant responded to the summons. A grey-haired woman bustled out of the office, untangling a pair of spectacles from around her neck and placing them on her nose, giving Belle a genial smile when she saw her standing at the front desk. She turned her head on one side as she saw Rumpel.

“Is your companion all right?” she asked. “Should I fetch a doctor?”

“He’s all right,” Belle said. “Just a bit of a chill in his head. Nothing contagious.”

The woman nodded and got down to business. “Very well, my dear. How can I help you?”

“We’d like a room with two beds please, for the next two nights. We won’t need meals.”

“I have just the thing for you. All of our rooms are available, in fact, so you can take your pick. Would you like a view over the market?”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Belle said quickly. She handed over the necessary money. “The name is French.”

The old woman made a note in her book and handed the pen over to Belle for her signature. She looked over at Rumpel again, opened her mouth as if to say something, but then thought better of it, taking a key from one of the cubby holes on the back wall and hurrying around the desk to lead them upstairs. Rumpel noticed that for all the woman had said that all the rooms were available, two of the cubby holes did not have their keys in, and he wondered whether they had been lost, or whether they had occupants that she did not want to tell them about. In a way, the mystery made him feel a little more at ease. If their landlady had secrets of her own, then she was less likely to try and investigate their secrets.

They reached the room and the woman unlocked it. It was small, but the two beds were neatly made up and unlike the entrance, it had been dusted recently. Rumpelstiltskin wouldn’t have cared if it hadn’t seen a broom or mop for a decade. Anything was better than sleeping on the floor of his cage.

Belle smiled widely when she saw the room. “This is perfect, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome, my dear. If you need anything, just call. My name is Mrs Lucas, but most people in these parts know me as Granny.”

As she passed them to come out of the room and return to whatever catastrophe their arrival had caused in the back office, Rumpelstiltskin got a good look at her for the first time, and she in turn met his eyes. He had no doubt that she had got a good glimpse of his unnatural face within his wrappings, but she showed no signs of alarm. Something in her sharp eyes was familiar, and Rumpelstiltskin wished that he knew where he knew her from, or who she reminded him of. He didn’t want anyone to recognise them for who they were and potentially turn them out or worse, report them to the authorities.

The door closed behind her, and Belle gave a sigh, going over to the curtains to block out the morning sunlight before collapsing down onto the nearest bed without bothering to take her shoes off.

“A proper bed,” she whispered. “When my father first brought me to the show, I never imagined that a proper bed would be the thing I would miss most.”

Rumpelstiltskin smiled, and set the pile of their belongings that he had been carrying down on the floor between the two beds, finally throwing off the blankets and stretching out his limbs. They were safe for the moment, and he was far too tired for the myriad niggling worries at the back of his mind to bother him now.

All the same, he did take the chair from the corner of the room and barricade it under the door handle, just in case.

Belle was already fast asleep on her bed when Rumpel returned to her, and he smoothed her hair out of her face, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“Thank you, Belle. For everything that you’ve done for me. Thank you for taking care of me today. I don’t know how I can repay you, but I’ll try and take care of you from now on.”

“S’all right,” Belle mumbled. She cracked one sleepy eye open and looked at him for a second before closing it again. “You make me brave.”

Rumpel wasn’t sure how that could be true when Belle had always been the one who made him brave, but he didn’t question it. He just kicked off his shoes and crawled between the covers of the other bed, sinking into the most comfortable deep sleep that he had ever had.

He woke with a start, unable to place what had caused him to rouse so thoroughly. There was no longer sunlight peeking around the edges of the curtains, so he worked out that he must have slept through the day and into the late afternoon.

His eyes fell on Belle, who was sitting up, rubbing her eyes.

“Belle? Are you all right?”

She nodded, then shook her head.

“I had a nightmare,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s no matter.” He slipped out of bed and padded across the room to her, sitting down beside her and putting an arm around her shoulders, like he had done on that first night when she had been crying in the misery of her circumstances. She leaned in against his side, cuddling in close as if it was the most natural thing in the world. For them, perhaps it was. Living together in such close quarters in the cage meant that the notions of personal space had lessened for them.

“I was dreaming about last night,” she said. “Everything was fire and confusion, and I had gone to set the horses loose, but I couldn’t find you. I looked everywhere, but you were nowhere to be seen, and then the flames got too big, and I was trapped in the middle. I was calling your name, but you didn’t come.”

“It’s all right.” Rumpel enveloped her in a hug. “I’m here, and I’ll never leave you.”

“Do you really mean that?” Belle sounded so small and unsure, and it broke Rumpel’s heart to hear her that way. She had always been so strong, especially for him, and to know that she was just as scared an insecure as he was touched something deep inside.

“I promise.”

He wasn’t sure which of them initiated the kiss, but once they started, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to continue. Belle’s hands came up to tangle in his messy hair, and he slipped his arms around her back, pulling her in as close as he could without crushing her in his desire to hold her.

Belle smiled shyly as she broke away, a light flush colouring her cheekbones.

“You know, for two people who haven’t had all that much practice, I think that we’re getting to be quite good at this.”

Rumpel nodded, unable to speak for fear of saying something ridiculous that would completely ruin the moment. Belle’s hands came down to his cheeks, gently turning his face back towards hers.

“Practice makes perfect though, right?”

This time, their noses bumped together as they were thinking about it too much, but Rumpel didn’t mind. There was something natural and authentic in it, and he was just too happy at the prospect of kissing Belle and all of the feelings that he was finally allowing himself to feel that he didn’t really mind how it all came about.

At last, they broke away again by mutual consent, and Belle rested her head against Rumpel’s shoulder.

“Thank you so much, Rumpel,” she said. “I know you don’t think that you’re brave, but you’re so much stronger than you know. Honestly. I’m so glad that I ended up with you when my father brought me to Zoso. If it wasn’t for your kindness, I don’t know what I would have done.”

Rumpel didn’t have a ready answer for that. He had no idea what he ought to say, so he hoped that his silence and his arms around her would speak enough for him.

They sat together on Belle’s bed for a little while longer, until Belle wriggled away from his arms and lay down again, patting the covers beside her. Rumpel lay down, reminded of their first night together when they had shared his blankets to keep warm. Even after Belle had received her own bedroll the next day, they had always slept close together, enjoying the comfort of the other’s presence.

Pressing himself up close behind her and putting his arms around her felt like the most natural thing in the world now, and Rumpel smiled to himself as Belle’s breathing evened out back into sleep, and he fell into a light doze himself. The events of the day were still turning themselves over in his mind, and now that he was no longer about to keel over from exhaustion, he was free to think about them. Everything seemed like a blur, but he kept coming back to Granny and the expression in her eyes when she had looked at him in the doorway of the room.

He sat bolt upright, remembering where he had seen her before and why she looked familiar.

“Rumpel?” Belle turned over, looking up at him sleepily.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “It’s not safe.”

“Rumpel? What’s wrong?”

“The landlady. Granny. She was at the show yesterday. She knows who we are.”

“Rumpel, it’s all right. Don’t panic. We can get through this.” Belle’s hand on his arm calmed him, and he looked across at her with wide eyes as she shuffled back into a seated position. “When was she at the show?”

“Yesterday. It was dark, just before closing. She came around all the of the cages, looking inside them. She didn’t stay long, but I recognise her face. What if she sends us back to Zoso?”

“We won’t let her,” Belle said firmly. She got up and took both his hands in hers. “If you’re worried, Rumpel, then we’ll leave and move on. I’ll come back and get the money from her later; I’ll say that something came up.”

Rumpel nodded, and together they gathered up their things, moving around the room quietly so as not to cause any alarm to the rest of the building. Rumpel was still very aware of the two cubby holes without their keys, and he wondered who else might be lurking around a corner.

They were just on their way out of the room when they ran straight into Granny, who had her hand raised to knock on the door.

“Oh, hello there.”

She looked at Belle, and then at Rumpel, who had not yet wrapped himself back up in preparation for leaving the room, the blankets still in his hands, and then she looked at their package of possessions in Belle’s arms. She didn’t seem at all perturbed by Rumpel’s skin, and instead, she just looked saddened.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” she said. “I was just coming to see you, because I think that I might be able to help you. When I heard about what had happened at the side show last night, I hoped that some of you might find your way into town. Please don’t be afraid. There’s no ill will in this house, I promise.”

Rumpel’s heart was beating painfully in his chest, and it was hard to speak around the knot of fear in his throat.

“You were at the show last night,” he said.

Granny nodded. “I was. I go to every show that comes to town. I was looking for my granddaughter.”

Belle and Rumpel looked at each other, and Belle opened the door a little wider to allow Granny to come inside. When she had spoken of her granddaughter, there was a sorrow in her voice that was completely genuine.

“Your granddaughter is like us?” Rumpel asked.

“Yes. She’s like your wolf-boy.”

Quinn, with his sharp teeth and face covered with hair.

“She was taken from me when she was a little girl,” Granny continued. “I’ve been looking for her since. She’d be around your age now,” she added, looking at Belle. “But that’s why I do what I can for those who come to my door who are different.”

Rumpel had not met many people in his life whom he trusted. In a world where he was destined to be on the fringes of society, it was hard to believe that anyone within that society had his best interests at heart. Granny had a loved one who was an oddity, but he and Belle had both been abandoned by the people who were supposed to love them.

He wanted to trust Granny. After everything that had happened, he didn’t want to live in fear any more. He desperately wanted to believe that there were good people in the world.

“How can we trust you?” he asked. His grip on the blanket was white-knuckled even through his green-gold skin.

“You only have my word for it, and I can understand that it might not be enough.” Granny gestured to the open door. “But perhaps there are other people who can convince you, and who can get you to where you can be safe and free.”

Belle looked at Rumpel, reaching out with her free hand. Rumpel grabbed it, holding on like a lifeline, and together they followed Granny out of the room and up the second flight of stairs, towards two doors at the end of the corridor. Granny knocked on both, and Rumpel thought that he might just have found the answer to the mystery of the missing keys.

Both doors opened at the same time, and Rumpel had to blink at the sight that met him. One of the men barely came up to Granny’s waist, and the other towered over her, his head scraping the ceiling.

“Leroy, Anton. These people have come from the sideshow outside town.”

The dwarf chuckled. “Now, that was a blaze and no mistake. Hats off to the person who got that one going. Good riddance to Zoso, I say.”

The feeling of terror was beginning to ebb away, and Rumpel felt marginally more confident of getting out of this predicament both alive and not returned to his cage.

“Can you introduce them to Mal?” Granny asked.

The giant nodded.

“I’m sure that she’ll be happy to help them. You know she never turns away a soul in need.”

Granny turned to Belle and Rumpel. “I’ll leave you in these two gentlemen’s capable hands. Good luck, my dears, and there’s no need to be afraid.”

For the first time, Rumpel really believed her when she said it.

“Leroy.” The dwarf held out a hand, which Belle shook amiably. “This is Anton. Do you need any beans? His room’s full of ‘em. Sells them at the market on Sundays.”

“No, we don’t need any beans, thank you.” Belle was smiling. “My name is Belle, and this is Rumpelstiltskin. May we ask, who’s Mal?”

“You may certainly ask.” Leroy grinned. “Mal’s a treasure, and we can take you to meet her now, if you like.”

“If she can truly help us, then that would be nice, but I think I’d rather know a little more about her first.”

“We’ll tell you on the way. Come on, Anton. Leave the beans, you can water them later.”

Anton rolled his eyes. “You’d think that all I did all day was water beans.”

“It _is_ all you do all day!”

Their banter continued all the way down the stairs. Despite the change in their fortunes, Belle and Rumpelstiltskin kept their belongings with them, just in case they needed to make a run for it. Although it was looking less and less likely, it would always pay to be prepared.

Rumpel bundled himself up in blankets again as they left the lodgings, and within the folds of fabric, he felt Belle clutch his hand tightly, her other one clinging to their things. Although she was putting a brave face on it, far braver than Rumpel’s own, she was just as scared as he was. Right now, everything seemed too good to be true, and it was only the fact that both Anton and Leroy had honest faces that was keeping him from turning tail and running in the opposite direction. Honest faces were something that he had seen very few of during his time in captivity, but he had seen them on his fellow oddities as they had come and gone with the show. There was a sympathy in Leroy and Anton’s expressions. They knew what it was like to be different.

The dwarf and the giant did not seem to mind the looks that they attracted as they walked purposefully through the town with their extra stragglers in tow, and soon they were out of the main thoroughfares and walking along by the waterside, in and out of winding back streets and alleys.

“Everyone who needs to find Mal can always find her,” Leroy explained. “We just like to keep a low profile, for obvious reasons. We don’t advertise much, but we can generally always guarantee a crowd any day of the week. Mal likes to make sure that she gets the right people in, and that they’ll tell like-minded friends.”

Rumpel didn’t let on his confusion at this mysterious speech on Leroy’s part, and he hoped that it would all become clear soon enough.

“She took us all in,” Anton continued. “She never turns anyone away if they come to her door looking for work, or shelter, or just a friend. She knows what it’s like. She’s been there, having no friends. So now she’s a friend to all in need.”

Rumpel soon saw what they were talking about. Further along the waterfront, near the docks, there was a brightly coloured big top, ribbons fluttering in the wind from its roof. For a minute, panic gripped him. He had travelled alongside a circus all his life. He knew all about them.

He stopped in his tracks, pulling Belle back.

“Hey, it’s ok,” Leroy said. “We’re all equals here. No cages, no sticks, no shouting. I promise.”

Belle’s hand squeezed his.

“I’m right here, Rumpel,” she whispered. “We’re going to be fine.”

It was Belle’s words rather than Leroy’s that soothed him. Belle would never let anything happen to him, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her, so he had to be strong and get through this by her side.

The group continued on towards the tent, until Leroy sped up to go and forewarn the mysterious Mal of their arrival.

Anton gave a soft little chuckle. “Normally I warn people about Mal’s appearance when they first come, but all things considered I think that would be patronising.”

Rumpel smiled. He’d seen all kinds of weird and wonderful appearances over his time with the sideshow and it would take a lot to phase him. Leroy appeared back at the entrance to the tent, waving them inside.

Rumpel took a deep breath, squeezed Belle’s hand once more for courage, and they entered.

This tent was a lot cleaner and far more well-maintained than the one Zoso had tagged along with. For all the time he had spent alongside the circus, Rumpel had never been inside the big top. Looking at it now, at all the trapezes and high wires and ropes, it took his breath away. He never believed that it could be so beautiful. A few people were sitting on the bleachers talking, a couple more were practising tumbling and contortions within the rings. He heard Belle gasp beside him, and he glanced over to see her looking up at a woman twisting around long silks hanging from the ceiling.

Belle could do that. She could bend herself in those ways and suspend in mid-air, flying like an angel in the tent. He could see her now, soaring above the audience.

“Hello there.”

A lady was making her way across the sandy floor towards them. She was dressed from head to toe in purple, with wildly curling hair falling over her face.

“My name is Cara Mallory, and I run this circus. Everyone knows me as Mal. Leroy’s told me that you’ve arrived from the show that was parked up on the hill last night.”

Belle nodded. “That’s right.”

Mal smiled. “I won’t ask how you came to be here, but the flames were impressive.”

“It was an accident. Braziers, confusion.”

“I’m not going to pry,” Mal said firmly. “I’m just happy that you’ve found your way to us, instead.”

Rumpel didn’t take in much of what she was saying, still looking around at the people within the tent as a profound realisation gradually dawned.

This was the place that Aunt Elvira had always told him about. Perhaps not Mal’s circus exactly, but a place very similar to this. This was a place where people like him, and like Belle, and like Aunt Elvira, could exist happily, a place where their differences were celebrated. Dwarves, giants, those with unnatural joints and unnatural skin and hair where it ordinarily wouldn’t be. They were all here, and all free, and all revelling in the differences that life had given them.

He unwrapped himself from the blanket that he had hidden in all the time that he had been outside in the town. For the first time, he felt no fear of being himself.

The chatter and atmosphere in the tent had quietened down when the newcomers had arrived, everyone naturally curious to see who these people were, but even when Rumpel revealed himself, it was still simple curiosity that reigned. There was no disgust or horror.

“Welcome.” Mal held out a hand to him. “If you choose to stay among us, then I hope you’ll find a home and family here.”

Rumpel took her hand. The skin was red and gnarled, shiny, and he recognised the burn scars for what they were. Beneath the curtain of her blond hair, he could see that half of her face was the same. She brushed her hair back behind her ear before letting it fall back, showing the full extent of the scarring and the blind, milky eye.

“I know what it’s like to be judged on an appearance you have no control over,” she said softly, clasping Rumpel’s hand tightly. A moment of understanding passed between them, and at last, Rumpel felt absolutely and completely at ease for the first time in longer than he could remember. He had not felt this safe since Aunt Elvira had been alive and protecting him from the world. Whilst Belle had made him feel brave and had given him motivation and purpose in life, renewing his energy and his will to continue, this feeling of security was new.

If Mal and the circus here could offer him that security, and Belle could give him that love and bravery, then there was no limit to what he might be able to achieve.

“Make yourselves at home.” Mal gestured around the tent. “Take some time for yourselves to decide if you would like to stay with us or not. If you’ve met Granny, then you’ll know that she’ll be quite happy to let you board with her for as long as you want whilst you’re here. We’ve always looked out for each other in this community.”

She went away to oversee something in the ring, leaving Rumpel, Belle and Anton standing by the bleachers.

Belle looked over at Rumpel with excited eyes, her gaze darting over to the woman on the silks who was just slithering down to the ground.

“Go on,” Rumpel encouraged her. “I’m sure that you would be able to do it if you want to.”

She gave a little squeak of excitement and pecked a kiss to his lips before running off to talk to the acrobats. Rumpel watched her for a while, drinking in the atmosphere. Anton disappeared off and returned with a teapot wearing a cosy in the shape of a strawberry, and two cups.

Tea was not a luxury that the oddities in Zoso’s show had enjoyed often, only in the dead of winter when he had wanted to make sure that none of them froze to death, and now Rumpel savoured the fragrant brew.

“How did you come to be with Mal?” he asked Anton.

“I’m lucky. I saw a poster advertising the circus and came along to see if they had any room for a seven-foot tall man. I got really good at dusting the back of the bleachers.” He laughed. “No, I’m kidding. I didn’t do any dusting. But I did find my own way here. Some people aren’t so lucky. We’ve got our fair share of outcasts, and runaways. Mal never turns anyone away, especially those who’ve come from much worse situations.” The pause was poignant. “How long did Zoso have you?”

The choice of wording was apt, and Rumpelstiltskin appreciated it. He had been sold into this life, he’d had no say in the matter.

“As long as I can remember. Since I was a little boy. It’s only been a couple of months for Belle, but still a couple of months too long.”

Anton nodded his agreement. “You don’t keep people in cages.” He sighed. “I swear Mal would break everyone out if she could, but we’re only a small venture and we don’t have the funds to take as many people as she’d like. We don’t advertise much, because we try and attract the right sort of clientele. The gawkers and the hawkers – they can go to the travelling shows. But the people who marvel at the spectacle and see what Mal’s created for what it truly is, a celebration of humanity in all its forms, well, they can come here, and they can tell their friends.”

They continued to watch the rehearsal for a while longer.

“What happened to Mal?” Rumpel asked.

“She doesn’t really like to talk about it. It was a long time ago, about fifteen years. Someone tried to burn her house down. I don’t know why. I’ve never known the full details, and everyone gives a different story of what happened. Mal won’t say. Some say it was a jealous lover. Some say it was some nutjob thinking she was a heathen because she’d had a kid out of wedlock. Her daughter was inside, and Mal got her out but got trapped in the flames herself.” He nodded towards one of the young acrobats who was talking to Belle. “That’s Lily. Mal always says that as long as Lily’s alive, she doesn’t care what her face looks like.”

Cradling the teacup in his hands as he looked at this new-found sense of family, Rumpel found himself wishing that Aunt Elvira could have seen this place. He had been so cynical after she had died, believing her dream of a community like this to be nothing more than a naïve dream, but now, he knew that her dreams had been completely justified.

He sat down on the bleachers, and opened the chest that he and Belle had brought with them from Granny’s, taking out the Elvira’s picture.

“We made it,” he whispered. “You always knew that we would. I never should have doubted you.”

Even though they had only just arrived, and even thought the fear at the back of his mind would not fully die for a while yet – not after having been so worried for so long – Rumpel could see a happy future in this place, among these like-minded people. Over in the ring, he looked at Lily teaching Belle how to wind the silks around her wrists.

He could see a happy future with Belle no matter where they might be, and he hoped that she could see one with him, too.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Watching the show from the safety of the darkness behind the curtain, Rumpelstiltskin never failed to be amazed by the wondrous spectacle. The horses prancing, the acrobats tumbling, and Belle dancing and bending in her element. Every time she was in the centre of the ring, Rumpel was mesmerised by her. She always looked so happy, as if she had truly found her niche.

When he stopped to think back over the last few weeks since they had arrived at the circus, he couldn’t believe that they had managed to fall on their feet and find such good fortune. There were times when he felt like pinching himself, half-convinced that it was all a dream; but in the end, he never did. If this was all a fantasy, then he wanted to remain in it for as long as possible before he woke up again in the confines of his cage.

As time had gone on, however, he had begun to accept that this was real life, and that these really were the people whom Aunt Elvira had talked about so much during his childhood. This was the place of her dreams, and even if she had not managed to find it herself, he had come here in her stead. Her picture from Zoso’s advertisement was still with him, safely in the breast pocket of his shirt where his beloved auntie would always be close to his heart.

Rumpel was still nervous. He had come through so much in his life at the hands of gawking spectators that he didn’t know if he would ever be comfortable in front of a crowd again, even though he knew that within the big top, they would be far more welcoming of his unusual appearance, the gasps being ones of awe rather than fright or disgust. Although he would be at home among those who performed, he preferred to sit back and help behind the scenes with Mal, picking up any odd jobs that needed doing. His talents with fabric and needle and thread had already proved invaluable, and Leroy had more than once remarked that he didn’t know how they’d managed to cope without him before he’d arrived.

Mal was happy for him to remain hidden; it was a sentiment that she well understood herself, and although their experiences of the world were very different from each other, the feelings were more alike than perhaps everyone else realised. Mal too knew what it was like to look so different to everyone else through no fault of her own, and she was used to the horrified reactions of the population at large to her scarred face. Together they watched the show from the wings, congratulating the performers on another excellent night, and making sure that everything went smoothly.

Belle loved performing, now that she was doing it of her own free will and not being forced to bend beyond her limits for cheap entertainment. Now she was performing acrobatics and trapeze acts, her natural flexibility allowing for jaw-dropping tricks and stunts without her body being contorted to the point of pain. Rumpel loved to watch her, even more so when they were alone in the big top and she was practising her routine, and he could sit alone in the bleachers, the sole member of her rapt audience, giving as much applause as if the tent had been full.

It was almost full tonight. The weather was mild and there had been a good turnout of people taking a stroll along the waterfront and happening upon the circus and its acts. The evening was just drawing to a close, and Belle was in the centre of the ring. She finished her set and uncurled herself, dipping into a low curtsey as the band began to play again. Rumpel smiled as she turned and came back towards the curtain, giving him a little wave as her bright, exhilarated eyes his gaze. He waved back, but then something else caught his eye, a face in the audience that was familiar to him.

His initial reaction to the feeling of knowing was panic. If there was someone in the audience whom he knew from the days in Zoso’s freakshow, then there was the possibility that they had recognised Belle. There was even a slim possibility that they had recognised him; although he stuck to the shadows as much as possible, he knew that he was not entirely invisible. Although he had always felt safe in Mal’s circus and he knew that she would never sell him out, he still lived in fear that one day Zoso would find them and would spirit them away in the middle of the night, back to a harsh life of cages.

He took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself and looked again at the face he recognised. Without the fog of panic, relief came immediately as he remembered where he knew the features from. It was Emma, the little girl who had given him her candy apple on the night that Belle had first come to the sideshow.

Rumpelstiltskin had to double-take. The show had moved on since he had met Emma, and he wondered how she could be here now when he had first seen her miles away.

“Rumpel?” Belle slipped through the curtain and stood beside him, her brow furrowed as she saw his fierce concentration. “Is everything all right?”

He nodded slowly, his eyes still fixed on Emma. Surely it could not be the same girl. It was only after a few moments, as Anton and Leroy began their act in the ring, that he realised that she was looking at him with just the same intensity. Presently, she cracked a little smile. It was definitely her.

Rumpel slipped a hand into one of his pockets. He still had one of the toffees that she had given him. He had kept it as a memento of the moment when his life had begun to change for the better.

“Rumpel?” Belle pressed.

“Just a reminder of different times,” he said.

Belle put her arms around him, nuzzling into his shoulder. “We’ll be all right,” she whispered. “We’re here now. Nothing can touch us again.”

“I know that.” Rumpel returned her embrace, letting the curtain fall and blocking Emma from sight. “In fact, it’s this reminder that’s made me sure that everything’s going to be all right.”

No matter what might happen with Mal’s circus, they were among friends, and they had each other. They had managed to escape from terrible odds before and they had landed on their feet. They could certainly do so again.

The show was rounding out to a close, and Belle skipped back to the ring to take her final bow with the rest of the performers. As Rumpel brought the curtain down and the audience began to file out of their seats in the big top, he looked again for Emma, but she was nowhere to be found.

He got the shock of his life when he turned around to find her standing right behind him.

“Hello,” she said brightly.

“Erm, hello.”

“How are you? Better for being out of that nasty cage, I hope.”

Rumpel nodded. “Much better, thank you.” He peeped around the curtain. “Shouldn’t you be with your parents?”

Emma declined to answer and took a large bite out of her cotton candy stick before offering it to Rumpel. “You like candy, don’t you?”

“Yes, but…”

The performers came back through the curtain, and Emma waved to them all genially as they went past, some of them not noticing her and others giving Rumpel perplexed looks as to what a well-dressed and well-to-do child with a cotton candy stick was doing behind the scenes in the circus. Belle stopped by his side, slipping her arm through his and going up on her toes to kiss his temple. She started when she saw Emma.

“I see you’ve found yourself a friend, Rumpel. Who’s this?”

“My name’s Emma.” She held out the cotton candy to Belle. “Are you his wife?”

Belle looked at him, and Rumpel looked back at her, and in that moment, something passed between them, an unspoken acknowledgement of the feelings that ran so deep.

Before anything could be said, however, there was a shout from across the tent.

“Emma! You can’t keep running off like that! You’ll get in the way!”

Emma’s father was weaving his way through the milling cast members and stage hands, her mother following on with a little more difficulty.

“I’m so sorry.” Her father bent to catch his breath as he reached them. “We’ve told her so many times.”

“It’s no bother, really,” Belle said. “I was just as curious when I was her age.”

“You’re really very pretty,” Emma told Belle, blithely ignoring her father’s attempts to pull her away from the couple. “Can you really bend your feet backwards? My friend saw the show last week and she said that you bent your feet backwards whilst you were doing a handstand.”

Belle laughed and sat down on the ground, slowly rolling her ankles like she had done that first morning in the cage, when she had introduced herself to Curi. Rumpel wondered what had become of the girl and her tigers; whether they had managed to land on their feet as well as he and Belle had. Knowing Curi, though, she’d probably be just as content living wild in the forest as she would in any kind of civilisation.

“Emma, that’s enough, we need to be going now.” Her mother had caught up with them, and took Emma’s sticky hand in a firm grip, ready to guide her away. She looked at Rumpel, and there was a moment of recognition in her face, as she remembered where she knew him from. She exchanged a glance with her husband and gave an imperceptible nod before whisking Emma away from the backstage area.

Emma’s father extended a hand. “David Nolan. I’m sorry for the trouble Emma’s caused.”

Rumpel shook the offered hand tentatively. It was the first time that someone from outside of their underground community had given him his hand and greeted him as an equal.

“She’s no trouble,” he said. “She’s a very astute and wise young woman. I hope she keeps her compassionate nature as she grows.”

Mr Nolan nodded slowly, and his eyes seemed to be searching Rumpel’s face, although there was no malice in his expression, just curiosity.

“I heard about Zoso’s sideshow being destroyed,” he said. “I’m glad that you’ve been able to find a better life outside it.”

The words were genuine, and Rumpel smiled.

“Thank you.”

“Well, I had best be off.” Mr Nolan looked over at his wife and daughter as they left the tent. “Do give my regards to Mistress Mal.”

“We will,” Belle said cheerfully. Out of the corner of his eye, Rumpel could see Mal hanging around, hidden in the shadows of a support beam. He wondered if Mr Nolan could see her too and was just politely pretending that he couldn’t.

Once the family had left, and the rest of the circus patrons were well away from the tent and the process of cleaning up had begun, Mal was still hiding behind her beam. Rumpel went over to her.

“Is everything all right?”

She nodded.

“I know the Nolans,” she said eventually. “Our families were close, and they tried to help us out after the tragedy. At the time, I pushed them away. I didn’t want their pity or their charity. I was too angry to accept the help that was offered in good grace with nothing expected in return. It’s strange to see them again after all these years. Perhaps it’s time to re-cultivate old friendships.”

Rumpel reached out a hand, touching the back of Mal’s where she was clutching the beam. Even in these much better circumstances, the comfort of the human touch was something that he still believed in, and Mal looked down at their hands, hers red and twisted and his green and scaled.

“Whatever you decide, I trust you to make the right choice.” Making connections outside of their own little community always brought risks with it, but if they had found true allies, like the Nolan family seemed to be, then hopefully they would bring benevolence, rather than harm.

The tent was emptying, the performers retiring to their tents or to their various homes around the town, and Belle took Rumpel’s arm, guiding him away from Mal where she remained lost in thought. They meandered their way back through the town towards their lodgings with Granny, the streets looking almost ethereal in the moonlight. There was no-one around at this hour, and Rumpel turned his face up towards the sky, letting the light shine down on him whilst there wasn’t anyone around to see. Maybe one day he would have the confidence to feel the sunlight on his face as well as the moon, but that would come with time. It was still early days, yet. He had always preferred night time. There was a comfort in darkness that could not be found anywhere else, and it had been a great friend to him during the first couple of years after Aunt Elvira’s passing. It was only Belle’s arrival that had brought light back into his life and taught him to value the days just as much as the nights.

Belle was uncharacteristically quiet throughout the journey home, deep in her own thoughts, and it was only once they were standing on Granny’s doorstep that she finally spoke.

“I was thinking about what Emma said.” She looked over at Rumpel and gave a shy little smile, the colour rising in her cheeks visible even in the dimness. “And if you would like me to be, then I would absolutely love to be.”

Rumpel didn’t have to ask her what she was talking about. Emma’s question was seared into his brain, repeating itself over and over on a loop. _Are you his wife?_

Belle had just said that she would love to be his wife.

For a long time, Rumpel couldn’t speak. He had no idea what to say, or what not to say. Everything about his relationship with Belle was still something new to him. The idea of getting married and having a family of his own one day had simply never occurred to him all whilst he was growing up. Marriage and love and happiness were for other people, not for the likes of him. They were for normal people.

He loved Belle. He loved her more than anything else in the world, and he knew that if he were ever to lose her, then he would have lost half of his own soul as well. They had been thrown together by adversity and their bond had been forged in fire – literally, as they escaped from Zoso’s clutches. That didn’t make it any less genuine or valuable.

“Rumpel?” Belle’s voice was soft. “Rumpel, please say something. We’ve been standing here for a long time.”

“Really?” he blurted out. The cynical voice in the back of his mind that sounded like his father was still wholly unconvinced despite her earnest expression.

“We really have been standing here for several minutes.”

“No, no. Would you really like to be my wife?”

Belle nodded. “I love you, Rumpelstiltskin, and I can’t think of anything that I want more than to be with you forever.”

“Oh Belle. Sweet, lovely, beautiful Belle. I love you too. I can’t promise that I’ll be a good husband, I mean, I don’t know anything about being one, but if you give me the chance then I want nothing more than to make you happy for the rest of your life.”

It was maybe not his most eloquent of speeches, but it had everything in it that needed to be said.

“Yes, Rumpel. Yes. I want that so much.”

She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly and burying her face in his neck. They were engaged to be married, and it had all happened so easily. Rumpel wondered if it would have happened at all if Emma hadn’t intervened, or if he would have been labouring under the misapprehension that matrimony wasn’t something he could have forever.

Belle released him from their tight embrace, but Rumpel didn’t want to let go of her, cupping her cheeks gently and leaning in to kiss her. Belle returned the kiss with vigour, pressing her tongue between his lips until he opened for her. It vaguely occurred to him in the back of his mind that they were outside and anyone looking out of their windows, including Granny, would be able to see this display, but for once in his life, Rumpel couldn’t bring himself to care.

The world could keep its opinions to itself. He had found love when he had long since accepted that it would be beyond him. Belle loved him, no matter what he looked like and no matter the texture of his skin. They were going to be husband and wife, and together they would make sure that nothing would ever come between them, presenting a united front against whatever the world threw at them.

Rumpel was happy. He had been happy ever since they had made their escape from Zoso, but there had always been an undercurrent of anxiety running along at the back of his mind, even in the most pleasant moments with Belle and the rest of the family at the circus. He had never been able to shake the shackles of persecution and ridicule that he had worn his entire life, and the gnawing fear of ending up back in Zoso’s hands was a hard one to ignore.

Now though, it was gone. All that mattered was Belle, and him, and the life that they were going to make together.

Belle broke away from him, taking a deep breath and nudging her forehead against his.

“You know, if that’s how we’re beginning our engagement, then I think we’re in for a very happy marriage.”

Rumpel just chuckled, and kissed her again. He couldn’t wait to begin.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The big top had never looked lovelier. Leroy and Anton had truly gone overboard with the decorations, and the tent was now a glorious confection of white drapes and flower petals. The rest of the performers, along with assorted family, friends and well-intentioned taggers-on, were sitting in the bleachers, all murmuring in excitement among themselves.

Belle and Rumpel stood in the centre of the ring with Mal, Emma standing alongside them with her flower girl’s bouquet. The mended fences between Mal and the Nolan family had brought nothing but good fortune to the circus, with David’s wealth and influence helping to attract the sort of visitors that they needed, whilst keeping away those that they could do without. Another side effect of his close involvement was Emma’s regular presence around the big top, to the point where Rumpel thought that she was seriously considering running away and joining the circus herself when she was older.

With the Nolans’ help, Mal was now able to house and help more people than ever before, and a small but reasonably steady stream of newcomers was arriving at the circus, one or two a month. Sometimes they moved on again after a few days, but sometimes they stayed. They were people who had heard about the circus and the sanctuary it provided, and who had heard inspirational rumours of the great escape from Zoso. Every day, Leroy and Anton brought Rumpel and Belle news from the grapevine around the town. There was talk of a wolf-girl making her way towards them, and although Granny didn’t want to get her hopes up, Rumpel had certainly noticed a spring in her step. Further rumours abounded of a girl living in the forest outside town, flanked by her tigers. Maybe Curi would find them in due course as well. It would be wonderful if those they had lost along the way could be reunited with them, and their families could know that they were well.

Rumpel pushed thoughts of people who were not present to the back of his mind. Today was about the people who were here, more specifically, about the person who was standing in front of him. Belle was looking absolutely radiant in a white silk gown that Mary Margaret Nolan had loaned her. There were flowers woven into her long dark hair, and a huge bouquet in her hands.

“Ready?” she mouthed. Rumpel nodded. He’d never been readier.

Mal smiled at them both. Her hair was up today, proudly displaying her scarred face. Rumpel had noticed the change in her over recent weeks. She was hiding away less, stepping out into the ring at the end of the circus’s performances to thank the audience for their patronage. Now that she was becoming part of the world again, she no longer felt the need to hide away from it as much. Rumpel had sometimes wondered what it was like for her, to have been transformed from looking perfectly normally to being undeniably different. He’d always dealt with his unusual skin; he’d never known anything different, but Mal had. For all she said that she didn’t care as long as Lily was safe, it was clear to all that she had always preferred to remain hidden.

Even though he had not known her anywhere near as long as the rest of the troupe, Rumpel had enjoyed seeing her growth throughout the past couple of months. It gave him hope for himself. He still wasn’t quite ready to face the world at large just yet. He wasn’t entirely comfortable being the centre of attention right now, but he just tried to focus on Belle and block out the rest of the people around him.

Mal began to speak.

“Welcome, everyone. We’re gathered here today to witness the marriage of Belle and Rumpelstiltskin. Now, we may not be in a church, and I am certainly not a priest, but ultimately, none of that matters. After all, what is marriage but two people promising to love each other forever in front of family and friends?”

The decision to get married in the big top had come easily to the both of them. Rumpel had never had any kind of religion himself, but he had naturally assumed that Belle would want a big church wedding. It was the kind of thing that she had probably been raised to expect, and he thought that she would want everything to be all above board when she committed herself to him for the rest of their lives.

It had come as a great shock to him to find out that the church was the last thing from her mind.

“This is our life, Rumpel,” she had said one evening, as they sat together on one of the trapezes that Rum had pulled down from the roof of the tent for repairs, swinging gently. “Here in this big top, among these people. This is our place. It’s where we’re at home. We’re not normal, you and I, and I don’t think that I would ever want to be normal again, nor play at being a normal, respectable couple getting married in a church.”

He would admit that he was glad. He wasn’t sure if there was any priest in the immediate environs who would agree to have anything to do with him, but he hadn’t voiced those concerns to Belle. He had just continued to be quietly relieved whilst the wedding preparations went on around him.

Rumpel fidgeted in his suit. Mal had found him one, left over by a magician who’d stayed with the circus for a brief time, but he couldn’t get used to its tight confines. He’d done away with the tie altogether, finding it too constrictive. Given his tendency to panic anyway, having anything tied around his neck wasn’t going to be conducive to a relaxed day.

Belle had grinned when she had first seen him wearing the velvet jacket, commenting that he brushed up well when the occasion called for it. Rumpel was quite happy that his skin didn’t show blushing, but he had felt a lot better inclined towards the suit after that.

Mal’s voice brought him back to the present.

“This isn’t a sombre ceremony, and there are no strict vows to repeat. So, just speak from your hearts, and you’ll make truer vows than ones that were ever intoned after a dreary minister in front of an altar.”

Belle handed off her bouquet to Lily and took Rumpel’s hands.

“Rumpelstiltskin. The day we met was the worst day of my life, and you were the only bright spark in it. You showed me kindness that I had resigned myself never to see again, and you showed me that no matter how bleak the world is looking, there are always truly good people in the places that you least expect them. Since then, you’ve never stopped fighting for the best life for me, and I don’t know how I can even begin to thank you for that. Ours may not be the most conventional of love stories, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Rumpel, I love you, and I promise to stay by your side forever.”

Rumpel coughed. “I, erm, I haven’t thought up quite as much.”

There was so much that he wanted to say to Belle. There was so much that he wanted to thank her for, and so much that he wanted to promise her, even if it wasn’t within his ability to deliver. It had got to the stage where he was tempted to have it all written down so that he wouldn’t forget any of it, but his reading comprehension wasn’t good enough yet to be able to get through a speech in a hurry, and he didn’t want to embarrass himself or Belle on this of all days. So, he had kept his feelings short and memorable.

One day, once Belle’s literacy lessons had continued to pay off, he would write down everything that he had wanted to say to her today, and she would know just how deep his feelings lay.

Belle squeezed his hands, grounding him in the present like she always could, and Rumpel took a deep breath.

“Belle, you were a flicker of light in an ocean of darkness. You reminded me that there was so much more to life than I had dreamed possible, and you gave me the strength to hope for better things for the both of us. Without you, I would never have found those better things, including love. Until I met you, I would never have believed I would be here now, but you taught me to hope and dream again. And I promise to love you for as long as I live.”

Belle’s smile was positively luminous, and Rumpel was sure that there were tears in Mal’s eyes as she spoke again.

“By the power invested in me as proprietor of this circus, I pronounce you husband and wife.”

Belle threw her arms around Rumpel’s neck, pulling him close and pressing her lips against his with a fervour that nearly made him stagger backwards with the force of it. It was certainly the most demonstrative that they had ever been in public, but Rumpel really didn’t care. He and Belle were married, and everything was going to be well in the world.

Of course, there were going to be mishaps along the way. Their lives would never be plain sailing by dint of their circumstances, but for everything about their lives that they could not change, there were so many more things that would bring them joy.

He didn’t even notice the applause and cheering that had erupted from the bleachers around them, or Leroy’s wolf-whistling from the front row. He was lost in Belle, in the feel of her arms around him and the taste of her lips on his tongue.

When they at last broke apart, it felt like a lifetime had passed, and yet it was still not enough. Belle giggled as he pecked another kiss to her lips.

“There’s plenty of time for that later,” she said. “We have all the time in the world now, Rumpel. We have each other forever.”

Forever. There had been a time in his life when the word had terrified him. The thought of all that future stretching out in front of him with nothing good visible in it. Forever in a cage, forever at Zoso and Killian’s mercy. Forever spent spinning and ignoring the eyes gawping at him from the other side of the bars.

Now though, forever didn’t seem like it was going to be long enough. A forever with Belle was the most wonderful prospect in the world.

Belle took back her bouquet from Lily, taking Rumpel’s hand tightly in her free one, and they moved towards the back of the tent where the rest of the wedding guests were congregating around the trestles that Granny and Anton had packed with food and drinks from the lodging house. There were people pressing in on every side wanting to shake hands and give their congratulations, but Rumpelstiltskin found that he did not mind the crush so much as he might have done. He felt truly safe around these people. They were family.

A strange family, certainly, but none the worse for the eclectic group of strangers who had come together to form it. Whatever might happen, they would always present a united front to the world, and they would always protect those within the walls of this tent. They might be oddities, but they knew how precious unconditional love and friendship were, and they would always fight to preserve that gift.

They weren’t normal, by any manner or means, but over the months spent with Mal and her circus, Rumpel had learned that not being normal was something to be proud of, not something to hide away. That was who they were. It was a part of their identity, and not something that should ever be pushed down and glossed over.

At length, the crush died down, with people breaking off into smaller groups to talk as they ate. Rumpel found Belle’s hand in his once more – she’d abandoned the bouquet somewhere and Rumpel thought it likely that it had ended up in Emma’s hands. She grinned over her shoulder at him as she led him up to the very top tier of the bleachers, away from the rest of the crowd. From here at the top of the tent, they had the best view of the entire big top. It had quickly become Rumpel’s favourite spot to watch Belle practise from.

Rumpel was glad that they were alone again. He had something to do, and he didn’t want an audience for it.

“Belle, I have something for you. I thought that today would be the best day to give it. I would have given it to you earlier, but there wasn’t time, and everything was all excitement and confusion.”

Belle tilted her head on one side, looking at him curiously.

“What is it?”

He reached inside his jacket pocket and brought out her locket, retrieved from the pawnbroker the previous day. He had not been making unaccompanied trips around the town for very long, and it had been a truly terrifying experience entering the shop and asking for the locket, but he had pushed through, and seeing Belle’s reaction, he was very glad that he had done so.

“Oh Rumpel! I can’t believe it! However did you afford to buy it back?”

“Well, you know that my spinning and sewing has been bringing in a little extra income. I simply put some of it aside for a rainy day. I know how much this means to you.”

Belle turned her back and lifted her hair so that Rumpel could fasten the locket around her neck again.

“Thank you so much, Rumpel.” She pulled him in for a rapturous kiss. “You’re the most wonderful man in the world and I’m so lucky to have you as a husband.”

“I think I’m the lucky one.”

There were no more words after that for a long time, just soft kisses and caresses, with eyes only for each other, ignoring the rest of the big top.

“So, this is us.” Belle gave a contented sigh, leaning into Rumpel’s side. “This is us, for the rest of our lives. Are you happy, Rumpel?”

“There aren’t words to express how happy I am, Belle.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

Rumpel closed his eyes, burying his face in Belle’s hair and breathing in the soft scent of the petals there. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps he was dreaming, but he knew deep down that he did not have the imagination to dream anything as perfect as this.

Belle’s fingers entwined with his, and she brought their linked hands up to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to his knuckles.

“I love you, Rumpel.”

“And I love you, Belle.”

Forever stretched in front of them, waiting to be filled with love and laughter, and Rumpelstiltskin was blissfully happy.

 


End file.
